Sandton, Johannesburg

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Sandton's skyline at night.

© Sandton Central Management District

The transformation of Sandton from a small-holding community to a fully fledged municipality within greater Johannesburg progressed rapidly when construction work began on the Sandton City shopping centre in the 1970s.

In 2000, when the South African bourse changed its name to the JSE Securities Exchange, and relocated to Sandton, after 113 years in central Johannesburg, Sandton’s reputation as Jo’burg’s new capital of wealth and style was truly established.

Sandton Drive, Katherine Street into Wierda Road East, West Street, Rivonia Road, and Grayston Drive, form the boundary of the Sandton CBD; and beyond it, the prosperous, residential suburbs of Sandown, Parkmore, Benmore Gardens, Wierda Valley, Sandhurst, Inanda, Chishlehurston and Atholl are Johannesburg’s equivalent of Beverly Hills. East, on Sandton’s doorstep by contrast, is the huge, informal, and mostly poor township of Alexandra.

About 20 hotels in the Sandton CBD offer top-notch accommodation, many of them 5-star. The Sandton International Conference Centre (ICC), numerous hotel conference venues, and convenient access to banks, internet services, medical facilities, and transport, make Sandton the centre of Johannesburg’s business tourism industry. A number of embassies and consulates are based in, and around, the Sandton CBD.

Shopping is a favourite occupation for Johannesburg’s fashionistas, who flock to the Village Walk, Michelangelo Towers Mall, or Nelson Mandela Square to buy high-end international lifestyle brands, jewellery, art, antiques, and African couture.

Sandton City, one of the largest shopping malls in the Southern Hemisphere, and currently undergoing further extensions, is the grand dame of retail therapy in Sandton, with 300 stores.

Next door, on Nelson Mandela Square, a 6m bronze Nelson Mandela statue watches over Sandton’s most fashionable meeting place. Sporting a fountain, notable steakhouses, a library and a theatre, the outdoor piazza is Jozi’s answer to St Marks in Venice.

After dark, Sandton’s moguls shed their jackets and ties, and join Johannesburg’s poshest party animals in Sandton’s upmarket restaurants, bars, coffee shops, clubs, and late-night entertainment venues. On weekends, a European-style street culture of organised buskers, street performers, and outdoor art exhibitions, prevails.

Innesfree Park and the soon-to-be-rehabilitated Mushroom Farm Park are green spaces within walking distance of the CBD, and the ideal places to jog, picnic, or watch the sun sink below Sandton’s iconic skyline.