Experience the all-time high of the Carlton panorama, a view of the city from the highest office building in Africa, the 50 storey Carlton Centre at 223 m (731 ft). Drive past the financial empires of the Randlords in central Johannesburg, also the historical heart and Museum Africa as well as the old Johannesburg Stock Exchange. We also visit the poverty stricken area of Hillbrow, drive over the Mandela bridge, go past the Old Fort and Mandela’s last home in the suburb of Houghton.
 

GOLD RUSH

The main Witwatersrand gold reef was discovered in June 1886 by George Harrison, triggering the gold rush and the start of Johannesburg.
By 1896 the  Johannesburg already had over 100,000 inhabitants; one of the fastest growth cities ever.
Like many late 19th century mining towns, Johannesburg was a rough and disorganized place, populated by white miners from all continents, African tribesmen recruited to perform unskilled mine work, African women beer brewers who cooked for and sold beer to the black migrant workers, a very large number of European prostitutes, gangsters, impoverished Afrikaners, tradesmen, and Zulu “AmaWasha”, Zulu men who surprisingly dominated laundry work.

POST-UNION HISTORY

Major building developments took place in the 1930s. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Hillbrow went high-rise. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the apartheid government constructed the massive agglomeration of townships that became known as Soweto. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, tower blocks (including the Carlton Centre and the Southern Life Centre) filled the skyline of the central business district. The central area of the city underwent something of a decline in the 1980s and 1990s, due to the high crime rate and when property speculators directed large amounts of capital into suburban shopping malls, decentralised office parks, and entertainment centres. Sandton City was opened in 1973, followed by Rosebank Mall in 1976, and Eastgate in 1979.

GEOGRAPHY

Johannesburg is located in the eastern plateau area of South Africa known as the Highveld, at an elevation of 1,753 metres (5,751 ft). The former CBD is located on the south side of the prominent ridge called the Witwatersrand (Afrikaans: White Water’s Ridge) and the terrain falls to the north and south.