Southern Gauteng is the southernmost area of Gauteng, which is one of nine provinces in South Africa.
Named Gauteng in December 1994 after the country’s first democratic elections, the province now boasts a thriving landscape, community and trade centre. Whilst being known as the smallest of all of the country’s provinces, it takes the prize by having the largest population of all the provinces with 11.2 million people. That means that the province of Gauteng alone makes up 22.4% of South Africa’s population, meaning another statistic that it wins is population density – as it is the smallest province with the most people, 658 people per a square kilometre in fact (as opposed to, say, the Northern Cape Province that has 3 people per a square kilometre).
Gauteng, even the southern most parts of it, were built on the wealth of gold that was found in this region. 40% of the world’s gold reserves come from this area, which is why it was named after the Sesotho word for “place of gold”. The province’s southern most big cities are Johannesburg, covering a municipality of over 1600 square kilometres, and Soweto, Benoni, Springs, Vanderbijlpark and Meyerville.
Visitors usually flock to this area for business or industry specific reasons, as it is highly concentrated and doesn’t lend itself well to quiet holidays.
