Mountain high, mine dump deep — the soulful collision of SA’s two hearts

For years, I’ve maintained that Johannesburg and Cape Town are two separate planets, spinning on different axes.

The December migration used to be one-way and predictable: GP number plates filling Cape Town streets, eye-rolls from locals about “Gauties” and then January’s quiet exhale as the holidaymakers left. The Mother City would reset into postcard mode – sleepy, scenic and self-contained.

But then the Covid pandemic happened. It didn’t just disrupt things; it fundamentally rearranged them.

Semigration stopped being a lifestyle flirtation and became an operating model. Now the holiday town that was Cape Town feels different – brimful of energy, ambition, diversity. A little louder, a little messier. A little more like Joburg?

For many Joburgers, particularly those with the means, the move south isn’t a departure from South Africa, but a choice for a better lifestyle in it. Cape Town delivers the basics: the lights stay on and, although water is a precious commodity, the infrastructure to manage it remains robust.

There is a palpable sense of pride in the civil service here – an actual desire to govern and a roster of public officials who inspire confidence rather than fatigue.

Some argue that if you manage a narrow, photogenic coastal strip well – essentially the Atlantic Seaboard and its supporting cast – you can manufacture the feeling of urban efficiency. Scale does matter, though. The “city” many experience daily in Cape Town is Johannesburg’s Rosebank to Sandton hugging a mountain. It’s basically a corridor, and a beautifully behaved one.

And yet just about every week I meet a semi-semigrant, those who shuttle weekly, or monthly, getting their fix of both cities. They want the sea and the mountain – and the frisson and collision too.

My friend Josef said it 20 years ago: if Cape Town and Joburg were on a dating site, Cape Town would be the one looking superhot in a bikini. Joburg would be the one with the great personality.

Survey anyone – young or old, wealthy or scraping by – new to Cape Town and the anecdotal refrain is familiar: Cape Town is cliquey. As a newcomer or even someone who has been in that city for years, people say it’s hard to feel like you belong. Don’t hold your breath for a braai invite, I am told.

Changing dynamics

About three years ago, I started hearing something new: “Cape Town is so much friendlier now.” I counted how many Jo­­burg people I knew had relocated there and understood why.

What defines Johannesburg isn’t infrastructure, it’s encounter. Go to Carfax on a Friday night in gritty Newtown, or the Yeoville Dinner Club. The room is cosmopolitan in a way that isn’t curated. Artists back from European residencies stand next to neighbourhood regulars. Students, hustlers, designers, car guards, activists, entrepreneurs, all in the same space. Joburg’s not tidy, but it is porous.

Boundaries collapse constantly, just like roads. Lives rub up against each other. Community isn’t aesthetic; it’s how we survive. We do things ourselves because no one else is coming. The city has a kind of child-­headed-household energy. Scrappy kids looking after each other because our parents are drunk and lying under
a tree.

Cape Town, by contrast, can feel like a masterclass in layered access. You’re invited to the Art Fair as a VIP, only to discover there are 9,999 other VIPs and none of them gets offered a drink. Whispered hierarchies float through the room, as if social ranking operates on the same logic as the guest lists for the Vanity Fair Oscars party or the Met Gala. You book the “skip the queue” ticket for a party only to discover there’s a VVVIP entrance you didn’t know existed. Even in paradise, status anxiety is real.

If I had a dollar for every time someone in Cape Town admitted it’s a bubble, I’d be able to buy an artwork priced in dollars at a local gallery and still have change for a matcha while I queue on Main Road in Sea Point to discuss global capital flows. It’s all forgivable, though – the light alone in that city is enough to make you forgive almost anything.

The thing is, Cape Town curates desire while Joburg generates momentum. Cape Town has always known it is photogenic. And lately, it knows it’s wealthy. The quiet wealth of old money has grown louder. Ferraris and Lamborghinis growling through single-lane bottlenecks. Celebrity homes cascading down cliffs. If you want to be invited to someone’s house for dinner – not to admire the architecture, but to genuinely connect – put your money on Joburg, a place where reciprocity is muscle memory.

And then, there’s the Lycra. In Joburg, if you arrive at a meeting in gym gear because the water was cut and you came straight from training, you will apologise to everyone within a five-metre radius. In Sea Point, athleisure is a lifestyle philosophy. Matcha in hand. Exercise is optional.

At 5.30am in Joburg, the city is already negotiating with itself. Runners out. Neighbourhood cafés firing up by 6am, traffic thick with intent by 7.30am. In Cape Town at 11am, coffee shops are full, tidal pools are still the main event, and a 2pm meeting feels ambitious. Two speeds. Two definitions of productivity.

I don’t want Joburg to become Cape Town. What I wish Cape Town would borrow from Joburg isn’t its grit. It is its humour. A little less self-seriousness about tiers, a little less choreography around who belongs in which lane and a little more willingness to let things be messy. Because somewhere between the mountain and the mine dump, we get a country that only really works when both are in the room. DM

Laurice Taitz-Buntman is an avowed urbanist and the founder of Johannesburg In Your Pocket, a city guide and media platform dedicated to reframing Johannesburg through storytelling, travel and urban experience.

What do you think of the writer’s view that Joburg has more heart, soul and humour than Cape Town? Write to us at heather@dailymaverick.co.za

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.