Sandton tourist information

Sandton is a town in the northern part of the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Area,South Africa in the Gauteng Province. The name comes from the combination of two suburbs, Sandown and Bryanston, both of which were named after places in the United Kingdom.

It has become the new financial centre of South Africa and Johannesburg's premier business centre. Much of the financial focus of Johannesburg has shifted from the Central Business District to Sandton, especially in the last 15 years. However, three of South Africa's four largest banks have kept their head offices in downtown Johannesburg, along with Transnet, the transport parastatal. The other bank, Nedbank has its headquarters in Sandton.

But much of the "new money" has moved north to Sandton, including investment banks, financial consultants and the like. A considerable amount of the city's A-grade office space is to be found in Sandton. The JSE Securities Exchange, Johannesburg's stock exchange, relocated its offices to Sandton from the Central Business District in the late 1990s. Sandton's gain was the central business district's loss: it resulted in urban blight and "white flight" of the downtown Johannesburg area.

One of the main attractions in Sandton is Sandton City, which ranks among the largest shopping centres in Africa. Together with Nelson Mandela Square, the centre, with some 144,000m² of shopping space, is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, larger than Sydney's Westfield Parramatta or Melbourne's Westfield Southland centres. Much of Johannesburg's business tourism is centred on Sandton, which has a string of 5-star hotels.

Nelson Mandela Square, formerly known as Sandton Square, was renamed in March 2004, after the unveiling of a 6-metre bronze statue of the former president, arguably one of South Africa's greatest statesmen. Perhaps ironically, Liliesleaf Farm, where Mandela and other political activists were arrested in the 1960s and tried as part of the now infamous Rivonia Trial, is north of Nelson Mandela Square, close to the N1 freeway, off Rivonia Road. The area is now home to massive office parks and other developments, and little remains of the farm.

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