Highlights
The Apartheid Museum
Apartheid was dismantled over decade ago but its full horror lives on in a stark white building on Gold Reef Road, Ormonde. Entry tickets − white and non-white − are issued at random and dictate which doorway you enter through. It's a simple but effective taster of what it was like to have your entire life determined by your skin colour. Documentary pieces of film, texts, sound clips and live accounts will take you on a fascinating, horrifying, humbling and ultimately inspiring journey that recounts the bewildering history of racial segregation.
Constitution Hill
South Africa's Constitutional Court, is built on what used to be a high security prison complex, The Old Fort, originally built to house prisoners of the Anglo-Boer War, later the ‘native prison’ called Number 4 and the Women’s Jail were added and the complex became a detention centre for everyone from common criminals to political activists among them Mahatma Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. Many of the surrounding buildings have been turned into museums where exhibitions detail South Africa’s path to freedom and democracy. Tours include a visit to Mandela’s cell and visitors are invited to add their comments to the “We, The People Wall” – via copper bricks which are then added to the wall.
Johannesburg Zoo
From its humble opening in 1904, when its inhabitants consisted of a male lion, a female leopard and a male baboon, the Johannesburg Zoo is now a sprawling fifty-four hectares of beautiful grounds, accommodating up to 2,070 animals, representing 365 different species.
Gold Reef City
Just eight kilometres from the centre of Johannesburg, the uniquely South African Gold Reef City offers a host of thrilling rides, a casino, an animal farmyard, Story of Gold Heritage Tours, the Town Square showcasing up-and-coming local talents and headline bands as well as a host of restaurants. Look out for the gumboot dancing displays – conceived by black miners as an alternative to drumming, (which was restricted), it is now something of a South African art form.
World Heritage Site: Cradle of Humankind
About an hour’s drive out of the city you’ll find Maropeng the official visitor centre of the Cradle of Humankind and the Sterkfontein Caves. A World Heritage Site, the Cradle of Humanity is widely recognised as the place from which all of humankind originated – visitors learn about the history of earth’s creation on an underwater boat ride through the complex of fossil-bearing caves.