Even though I have visited the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria a
couple of times for the last two years but my last journey was amazing and
astonishing. My aim was to reach the Somali Embassy of South Africa which is
based in Pretoria, the capital city of South Africa. Before I prosecute, I’ve seen a number of people confusing the exact capital city of South Africa. For
instance, some say the city of Cape Town, others Pretoria and so forth.
As far as I am aware, South Africa is one of the few countries in
the world which has more than one city just like the Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Benin and
Chile and many others, it divides its governmental powers among three of its
major cities. However, Pretoria is the administrative capital, Cape Town is the
legislative capital and Bloemfontein is the judicial capital. While
Johannesburg stays the commercial capital of the Republic of South Africa.
Pretoria and Johannesburg were combined in one large province
called Gauteng. Gauteng is one of the nine provinces of RSA and situated in the northern part of the country, according to estimates, roughly 15 million people
live in Gauteng. It’s the most populous and highly urbanized province in South
Africa.
When I landed safely in O.R Tambo International Airport in
Johannesburg – Africa’s biggest and busiest airport which facilitates over 28 million passengers a year – my friends picked me up to the inside of the city. Assuredly,
friends and families welcomed me cordially and made my stay memorable and
remarkable until I felt the best place to live.
Special Things in Johannesburg
Johannesburg is also known as the City of Gold because it was a
gold-mining town in history. Nevertheless, most locals have shortened the long name to Joburg or Jozi. Johannesburg is also known as the “dry
port” because it has no sea, lake or river; it receives its freight through
the ports of Cape Town and Durban. However, Hillbrow Tower is the tallest
structure in Johannesburg at 269M high that gives a beautiful skyline to the city’s
feature. Johannesburg is also one of the cities with the most trees around the
world, its green environment literally enticed me. It has over 10 million trees. Those
trees have more advantages than you think, it makes the city very beautiful,
reduces the noise, and gives the city nice weather even during summertime, and
most likely the city rains every month.
Mall of Africa
Mall of Africa is the largest shopping mall to be built in Africa;
it locates in Waterfall City, Midrand, Gauteng. The tenants of the mall include
both South African and International brands. The mall has been opened 28th
April 2016 and received over 100,000 shoppers on the opening day. I was really
inspired by the design of the mall. I and my friends chilled there and had a
wonderful sea-food and coffee from Starbucks – America’s largest coffee company.
Sandton Mall
Sandton Mall is another fascinating place and very famous in the
area of Johannesburg. What makes astonishing area is; it has the Nelson Mandela
Square – a public square that has been attached a six-meter high statue of
Mandela. We enjoyed the place though we’ve struggled a bit to get out of it since
we lost our parking car area that took us a long time to look for it. I had a coffee, doughnuts for refreshment, meantime reading and looking for special books in the Exclusive Bookstore.
I had the opportunity to visit Wits and Johannesburg Universities.
We firstly had a beautiful lunch at Melrose Arch Mall which is quite fascinating place.
I and some of my friends had also shortly visited Johannesburg and Wits
Universities which are quite amazing places to study, just to observe the
differences of Cape Town and Joburg Universities.
Last but not least
I lastly went to Exclusive Bookstore, one of South Africa’s largest
book-selling shops. What I liked about it is; they serve a wonderful coffee in
the bookshop. You can pick up any book you're interesting in, sit down and
read with your coffee before you decide to buy it. I took number of books to speed-read
and finally decided to buy three important books which were in my 2019 plan
list.
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