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full- AND half-day Tours Around Johannesburg
As per Tourism Protocols, all tours are conducted as private for groups that are already connected to each other. You supply your own mask - we supply the sanitiser and off we go - exploring the city’s inspiring and beautiful spaces.
City Tour in a vehicle
Urban Decay & Urban Regeneration
Johannesburg has always had a bad case of sibling rivalry. Outshone for decades by the beautiful, universally adored Cape Town, it developed a reputation for being loud, moody, and dangerous – and the tourists kept well away, seeing it as little more than an airport stop-off en route to the wine farms of the Cape, the Okavango Delta or the Game Game Reserves of the Highveld and Lowveld regions, but Johannesburg is the beating heart of South Africa, and it’s impossible to understand the country without spending time in this complicated, evolving, fearless city.
On the tour, we will experience old and new, wealth and poverty, from different points while you hear the story of the largest gold fields in the world. Drive through Hillbrow, past Constitutional Hill, over the Nelson Mandela Bridge, and onto Mary Fitzgerald Square. Stop for a drink at Urbanologi at 1 Fox OR 44 Stanley, a 1930’s industrial complex transformed into a boutique shopping destination (if the tour ends in Sandton) OR drive through the Maboneng Precinct – view wall murals and the lifestyle of the up-and-coming young Johannesburger – the place to be seen! (If the tour ends at O.R. Tambo Int Airport.)
Historical Walking Tour
Origins & Migration
The tour traces stories back to the origins of humankind, the origins of migration, and the origin of the Johannesburgs city’s people from Tshwane villages to Boer Farms and the gold rush.
Johannesburg grew rapidly and quickly transformed from a gold rush into a full-fledged city. Migrants continued to stream into the city from all over Africa and the world, in the process remaking city districts into distinct villages with the Ethiopian Quarter probably the most astonishing and surprising of all.
A fascinating walk through the Ellis Park World of Sport Precinct and the edges of Doornfontein (located in the East of the City), once a Jewish migrant community and today still a magnet for pan-African migrants; the area is rich in history of Cape Malay, Chinese and Portuguese migration.
Guests are welcome to enjoy Chinese and Indian/Cape Malay street foods along the way as well as an incredibly good cup of coffee.
Graffiti Tour
Explore the art around you
It is said that Graffiti artists are returning to our ancestral roots; the KhoiSan/Bushmen painted their ‘Graffiti’ on cave walls and rocks and today artists use the underpasses and uninspiring concrete walls as their canvases.
Graffiti arrived relatively late to the streets of Johannesburg, first appearing in the mid to late 1990’s. It came at a time when the city was in a period of major degeneration; the perfect environment for Graffiti to explode. And explode it did. Just as street art became popular amidst the deterioration of 1970’s New York, so too did the downturn of Johannesburg provide a grimy playground for early Graffiti writers to hone their craft.
Johannesburg has a thriving Graffiti art culture with bold new murals and artworks by local and national artists on the city’s walls, bringing colour to Jo’burg’s busy streets.
Apartheid Museum
Struggle & Democracy
The basic principle behind Apartheid was simple – segregate everything and cut a clean line through a nation to divide other ethnicities from white and keep them divided.
The path through the Museum brings life to the horrors of Apartheid/segregation. Retrace the history of many cultures during the Pre-Apartheid era; this is the story of South Africa’s struggle for democracy, told with powerful displays and interactive elements through everyday heroes, as well as historical leaders, detentions and oppressions of the Nationalist regime.
This extraordinarily powerful museum will make you feel that you were in the townships in the '70s and '80s, dodging police bullets or teargas canisters, or marching and toyi-toyiing with thousands of school children, or carrying the body of a comrade into a nearby house.
Nelson Mandela Exhibition
At this museum is an exhibition celebrating the life and times of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. How Mandela built a new nation from the fragments of conflict, making full use of the “weapons” at his disposal: love, persuasion, forgiveness, and an acute political shrewdness – with a fair amount of self deprecating humour sprinkled in for good measure.
The story is told through visual wall displays, supported by films, hundreds of photographs and displays of original artefacts.
Mandela’s Journey to Freedom
Highlights Tour
While many visitors to South Africa associate Cape Town's Robben Island with the life of Nelson Mandela, Johannesburg is a city that is also forever associated with his life. Here he first found his feet as an anti-Apartheid activist and began the brave struggle against discrimination that lead him to the Rivonia trial and eventually prison. Following his release from prison, Mandela again made Johannesburg his home.
In addition to following in the footsteps of Tata Madiba, the tour will also shed light into the lives of key political luminaries such as Gandhi, Oliver Tambo and countless other activists and freedom fighters who took strides in the long and arduous journey towards a democratic South Africa.
Nelson Mandela Foundation
Dialogue & Legacy
The Nelson Mandela Foundation was established in 1999 when its founder, Mr. Nelson Mandela, stepped down as the President of South Africa. This is where he received the heads of state such as Paul Kagame (former Rwanda President), Bill Clinton and Nicholas Sarkozy (former French President), and celebrities such as Naomi Campbell, Charlize Theron and Will Smith.
In particular the centre focuses on the life and times of Mandela and his lifelong dedication to social justice with a permanent exhibition outlining his life and the context of his struggle for freedom, complimented by many personal artefacts such as his letters from prison, personal photographs, and his Nobel Peace prize.
Come view and walk around his office that has been perfectly preserved, where he worked from 2002 to 2010.
Mohandas Gandhi
Activist & Spiritual Leader
Gandhi arrived in South Africa in 1893 as a young attorney, to handle legal matters for an Indian merchant in Durban and stayed for 21 years. He campaigned for the right of Indians in South Africa to be treated as citizens. He was jailed four times and went back to his homeland in 1914, playing a central role in India's independence. He is quoted to have said:
"Truly speaking, it was after I went to South Africa that I became what I am now, my love for South Africa and my concern for her problems are no less than for India."
Gandhi's principle of Satyagraha greatly influenced the early struggle against apartheid and was adopted by the African National Congress in 1912. It later shaped the anti-Apartheid Defiance Campaign and influenced numerous other peaceful liberation movements around the world.
Constitutional Court & Old Fort Prison
Place of Brutality & Human Rights
In contrast to most courts, it is welcoming rather than foreboding. It is noted for its distinctly African feel, transparency, and succession of beautiful spaces.
South Africa’s first major post-Apartheid government building was built using bricks from the demolished Section Four and Section Five of the “natives’ jail,” built in 1902. It is unusual for a court to be built on the site of a prison but it is a potent symbol of the democracy that replaced apartheid.
A living museum that tells the story of South Africa’s journey to democracy, extensive exhibitions reveal shocking details about the brutality of the Apartheid prison system and stories of the daily struggle for dignity are told through the eyes of the many ordinary and notable people who passed through this frightening place – famous figures such as Mohandas Gandhi and Albert Luthuli. Nelson Mandela paid the Fort a visit as well… first as a young lawyer, then as a prisoner, and finally as the President of South Africa.
Soweto – An Unforgettable Journey
Contrast and Culture
Soweto - an acronym meaning: South Western Townships. Soweto is steeped in history, with a diverse array of vibrant cultures, trend setting fashion and art coupled with a friendly warm atmosphere.
The tour takes you into the community and around Soweto’s famous landmarks like Hector Pieterson Memorial, Vilakazi Street and Nelson Mandela’s House.
Soweto was, and is home to many heroes in the fight against Apartheid. Its history goes back to 1904 when black mine workers, who had flocked to the gold fields since 1886, were housed in a township called Klipspruit, the oldest of a cluster of townships that constitute present day Soweto.
Experience and mingle with the people who call Soweto home, a community of extremes: On the one hand, there is abject poverty and on the other, extraordinary wealth in the upper-class suburbs, with some houses selling for over two million rand.
Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre
Memory & Dialogue
This museum and centre of memory is the first institution of its kind that brings together the stories of genocide across two continents, creating parallels between the historical narratives of the genocide committed by Nazi Germany in World War II and the more recent genocide that occurred on African soil in Rwanda in 1994. An analogy of the Holocaust, genocide and Apartheid amplifies the differences and similarities between these historical atrocities. White-on-white violence is just as terrible as black-on-white and black-on-black violence.
The exhibition is deeply moving and highly engaging and is set in a space filled with symbolic references. The building's architecture is an award-winning space almost forcing the visitor to engage in a dark symbiosis of power, poetry, information, taboo, and horror.
Everard Read Gallery & Circa on Jellicoe
Art & Sculpture
The Everard Read Gallery was first established on a dusty street of Johannesburg when the place was a young mining town. Everard focuses on older, modern South African art.
Across the road is a sister gallery, the landmark CIRCA Gallery is much more contemporary and features international artists as well as local and international.
The CIRCA building is now recognised as one of Johannesburg's outstanding architectural landmarks. While its business is the art gallery within, its conspicuous form and design are intended to generate interest among passers-by, encouraging them to discover the myriad forms of art inside.
Being mainly a sculpture gallery, CIRCA presents itself as an intervention that challenges traditional concepts of exhibiting art and experiencing sculpture art. The architecture is therefore a sculptural artwork, moulding itself around the art it contains.
Liliesleaf Farm – Place of Liberation
Gardener to President
Lilliesleaf Farm was once the anti-Apartheid movements underground headquarters. In the early 1960s, the leafy, affluent northern suburbs of Johannesburg consisted mostly of farmland.
Nelson Mandela assumed the alias David Motsamayi, a supposed gardener, cook, and chauffeur for the Goldreich family at Liliesleaf, and to avoid suspicion lived in the farms tiny servants’ quarters during this time.
A raid on Lilliesleaf Farm in July 1963 led to the arrest of virtually the entire leadership of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), armed wing of the ANC who on conviction faced the death penalty.
