Johannesburg

Johannesburg is steadily expanding to join up with Pretoria to the north and the industrial towns of Vanderbijlpark and Vereeniging to the south, together forming the province of Gauteng (until 1994 Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging, or PWV for short). The province, with only 2% of South Africa's total area, contains 25% of its population.

It is difficult to establish the exact population of Johannesburg. The white population has remained fairly constant for some years at around 500,000; estimates of the black population range widely between 1 and 2 million (excluding the black ghetto of Soweto, which was separated from Johannesburg in 1983 and has a population of at least 2 million).

Although many gold-mines in and around the city have been closed down, Johannesburg is still the financial and industrial metropolis of South Africa. Most of the country's leading industrial firms have their headquarters here, and 70% of South Africa's industrial production comes from the Witwatersrand area. The city's Stock Exchange is one of the busiest in the world.

Johannesburg has three universities - the (English-language) University of the Witwatersrand, founded in 1922, the Rand Afrikaans University, founded in 1966, and the Vista University in Soweto, whose students are exclusively black - as well as a college of technology and a teachers' training college. In recent years there has been a great flowering of art and culture in Johannesburg, and the city's international cultural scene has sent fresh impulses throughout the country.

For many visitors to South Africa, Johannesburg is their first port of call, and many of them stay no more than a day or two before escaping from the city with its grave social problems. Certainly Johannesburg is not a beautiful town, and its architecture has only limited appeal. It has a high crime rate. But it is the South African city with the most stimulating atmosphere. While elsewhere in South Africa white and black people lived separate lives (and still do), in Johannesburg a gradual process of getting together had begun. Here you will meet more blacks of higher social status than elsewhere; here beats the heart of the new South Africa. Against this background it is well worth spending several days in South Africa's largest city. Visitors should, however, bear in mind the high crime rate. It is inadvisable to walk about after dark, when Johannesburg becomes a ghost town. The best way of seeing the sights is by taxi or on an organized tour. And of course it is advisable to dress simply and avoid flaunting an expensive camera. But there is no need to panic: the newspapers may report unpleasant incidents but they have little to say about the 3 million people who survive the day in Johannesburg unscathed.

Johannesburg International Airport (formerly Jan Smuts) the largest in southern Africa - is 25km/15 mi east of the city center. There are regular half-hourly bus services (5am-10pm) between the airport and the air terminal in the city center.

Johannesburg has excellent road and rail connections with other South African cities.

Thanks to its altitude, Johannesburg has a very agreeable climate. The winters are relatively cool and dry, with sunny days following ice-cold nights. In summer the temperatures are high, with occasional showers of rain in the afternoon. Average temperatures are 20.3°C/68.5°F in January and 10.2°C/50.4°F in July. Average annual rainfall is 847mm/331/3in. The number of hours of sunshine per day averages 8.7.

In July 1886 an Australian prospector, George Harrison, discovered by chance the world's largest natural treasure chamber, the Witwatersrand gold-mines. The news of his discovery spread like wildfire, and thousands of hopeful treasure-seekers flocked to the area and pitched their tents round the find-spot. After the richness of the deposits of gold was established the miners dug ever deeper into the earth, steadily improving their mining techniques.

Although the prospectors' camps continued for years to have a temporary aspect, the settlement's first public buildings were erected in 1888.

Johannesburg acquired a school, a hospital, a theater and a music hall. In 1888 the famous Wanderers' Club, a sports and entertainment center for the miners, was opened, and towards the end of the century it had 1,500 members, who could practice six different forms of sport. The Turfontein racecourse was opened in 1887.

By the end of the century the owners of the gold-mines - the "randlords", men like Barney Barnato, the Beit brothers, Cecil Rhodes and the Wernher family - had built up their financial empires.

The population of Johannesburg increased at a fantastic rate. Barely six years after the discovery of gold the town had 40,000 white inhabitants, and by 1905 the figure had risen to 150,000. The black population rose from around 60,000 in 1904 to 112,000 in 1911 (plus another 300,000 or so living outside the town). Most of the blacks were employed only as seasonal workers, returning periodically to the agricultural areas from which they came.

Turn-of-the-century Johannesburg still lacked an infrastructure adequate to its population. This was largely due to Paul Kruger, President of the Transvaal, who did not like the idea of an English-speaking town so close to Pretoria. He refused to grant Johannesburg the status of a town, in spite of the fact that within less than twenty years it had overtaken Pretoria both in population and in economic importance. The development of municipal services in Johannesburg began only after the Boer War (during which, on May 31st 1900, it was occupied by British forces). In 1904 it gained the right to elect its own town council, and in the following year it acquired a proper water and drainage system.

In the course of the 20th C the gold workings went ever deeper (down to 3581m/11,750ft at Carletonville). Some uneconomic mines were closed down; but in the early 1990s there were still over 50 gold-mining companies, most of them with several small mines. In addition to gold the mines yield manganese, iron and asbestos, as well as uranium, a by-product of the gold-mining process.

Johannesburg is a city of glaring disparities: here, more sharply than in other cities in the world, inconceivable wealth contrasts with extreme poverty. While over the last hundred years the black population has been relegated to the townships spreading ever farther to the south of Johannesburg, much of the white population lives very comfortably in the northern suburbs of the city. In these districts, concealed behind high walls protected by barbed wire, are attractive villas with beautiful gardens, swimming pools and other amenities, and their shops can stand comparison with boutiques in Rome, Paris or London.

The city center, laid out on a regular grid, is relatively small, but its high-rise blocks give it a skyline reminiscent of American cities. On weekdays after business hours and at weekends the central area appears to be populated almost entirely by blacks.