Introducing Gauteng

Fast, bustling and a cabaret of contradictions, Gauteng (pronounced ‘how-teng’) covers just 1.5% of the country’s land surface, yet accounts for 34% of its gross domestic product (GDP) and, perhaps more extraordinarily, 10% of the GDP of the whole of Africa. The laid-back, friendly atmosphere of Pretoria, the country’s administrative capital, belies a turbulent past. Fifty or so kilometres down the M1 motorway away is Johannesburg, the provincial capital and third-largest city on the continent. Sprawling and booming, it’s a strange conurbation of opulent suburbs set alongside some of the country’s starkest urban poverty.