About this guide
Discover Joburg is an independent travel guide to Johannesburg, Soweto and the trips that start there, from Pretoria and the Cradle of Humankind to Pilanesberg and Kruger. It is written by Patrick Kühne, a travel publisher based in Germany.
Not an official website
This guide has no connection to the City of Johannesburg, the Gauteng Tourism Authority, South African Tourism, South African National Parks (SANParks), the North West Parks and Tourism Board or any tour operator. We do not speak for any of them. For official information, the City of Johannesburg publishes at joburg.org.za, the Gauteng Tourism Authority at gauteng.net and South African Tourism at southafrica.net. Gate times, rules and conservation fees for the Kruger National Park are on sanparks.org.
Where the facts come from
Opening days, age advice and admission rules come from the places themselves, such as the Apartheid Museum, Constitution Hill, the Maropeng visitor centre and Wits University for the Sterkfontein Caves and the Origins Centre. History comes from South African History Online and Britannica, and the local names Jozi and eGoli from the Dictionary of South African English. Park facts come from SANParks and North West Parks, airport and train details from Airports Company South Africa and the Gautrain Management Agency, and climate figures from the South African Weather Service. Safety advice is taken from the travel advice of the British, US, German and Canadian governments, with the date it was checked. Each page lists its sources, checked in November 2026.
Where published figures disagree, we name the source with the number or leave the number out. The government gives Johannesburg’s altitude as 1,694 m and the city as 2,000 m, so the site says “about 1,700 m”. Population figures for Soweto differ within the same source, so the pages give none, and the new Pilanesberg entry fees appear in different amounts in different reports. Places that are closed are not recommended: the viewing deck at the top of the Carlton Centre has been shut since 2020, and the Johannesburg Art Gallery is being restored, with a reopening planned for July 2027.
How tours are picked
A tour appears here when it starts in Johannesburg or Pretoria, or picks you up there, and fits the subject of the page. We look at GetYourGuide first and add a Viator tour only where there is nothing comparable, for example hot-air balloon flights over the Magaliesberg or walks with guides who live in Ponte City. Where the same operator sells a tour on both platforms, we list it once. Duration, pickup, age limits and what is included are taken from the tour pages, and the pages say when something important is not included, such as the park fee on a Pilanesberg day trip. When a platform stops listing a tour, it disappears from the site automatically.
Some tours are left out on purpose. We do not list walks with lions or encounters with elephants. South Africa’s tourism trade association SATSA called walking with lions and cheetahs and cub petting “outright unacceptable” in its 2019 guidelines, and a government panel recommended in 2021 that the country stop breeding and keeping lions in captivity. As of November 2026 there is no legal ban on cub petting, so the pages do not promote it. We also do not recommend hotels or lodges.
Some places sell their own tickets and cannot be booked through our partners, among them the Apartheid Museum at its ticket desk and Constitution Hill at its visitor centre. The pages name the operator, and we earn nothing from those visits.
How the site is paid for
Tour cards and comparison tables link to GetYourGuide and Viator. If you book through one of these links, we receive a commission and your price stays the same. Prices and ratings are loaded from the platforms; we do not write or change them.
We are not a tour operator and do not take bookings. Questions about a booking go to the platform or to the operator named on it.
Photos
The photos come from Unsplash and Pexels. Many were taken in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Pilanesberg or Hartbeespoort. Others stand in for places that have no free photo: limestone formations in the Cango Caves in the Western Cape for the Cradle of Humankind, the Mandela statue at the Union Buildings in Pretoria for the Apartheid Museum, and an aerial view of Orlando Stadium for Soweto. Where the platform does not confirm where a photo was taken, as with the hot-air balloon, the caption stays general. Captions describe only what is in the picture, and each photo names its photographer.
Contact
Contact details are in the legal notice.