World City Guide

Shopping

Johannesburg is a shopper’s paradise, with a huge choice of options from upmarket fashion boutiques and big malls to street markets and vendors, curiosity shops and muti merchants (traditional medicine vendors – especially underneath the fly-over highway on the south end of Faraday Street and on downtown Diagonal Street).

To avoid the ‘Mall morbs’, visitors should try Johannesburg’s exciting array of flea markets, ranging from Market World’s ‘bigger is better’ to Organic Village Market’s ‘authenticity is all.’ Market World, 49 Ernest Oppenheimer Avenue, Bruma, is a sprawling, bewildering mass of hundreds of stalls – even the sidewalks approaching the area are covered with wares. It is open every day except Monday, 0800-1800, and carries a charge R1.50 for admission (this goes to charity). Open daily 0800-1700, the African Craft Market (website: www.crafts.co.za), next to The Mall, 1 Cradock Avenue, Rosebank, is an absolute must for all visitors, not just shoppers, especially as there are often live performances by local bands. It is more expensive and there is less junk on sale than at Market World but it still offers hundreds of stalls. Both places are among the best for African curios. Michael Mount Organic Village Market, 231 Bryanston Drive, Bryanston, Sandton (website: www.mmom.co.za), is truly a craftsman’s craft-market, where everything on sale is strictly handmade or organically produced. It is famous for tasty home bakes and a delicious range of homemade cheeses. A popular tea garden offers pies, pastries and pots of indigenous rooibos (bush) tea. It is open Thursday and Saturday mornings, as well as for a Moonlight Market (1700-2100) on the last Tuesday of every month.

New, huge shopping malls are still springing up in and around Johannesburg, with Eastgate Mall, Sandton City (website: www.sandtoncity.com), The Mall of Rosebank (website: www.mallofrosebank.co.za) and Fourways Mall (website: www.fourwaysmall.com) probably being the most user-friendly for the newcomer. Sandton City is the place where the rich and famous shop. It offers designer fashion, jewellery, electronic goods and also some excellent (but expensive) curio shops.

Over the past few years, the used book route has moved from Yeoville’s Rockey Street to Melville’s Main Road and Seventh Streets, while the favoured area for antiques remains Norwood, particularly Grant Avenue. Art Africa, 62 Tyrone Avenue, Parkview, sells a range of African arts and crafts objects, often produced from recycled materials in self-help projects. The Giraffe Centre, Second Avenue, Melville, has a wide selection of craft shops, Elephant Hide, 162 Corlett Drive, Bramley, is a good place to either shop for bush footwear and African designs or take a break in the garden with tea and a Zulu witch doctor’s fortune telling. A wonderful place for handicrafts made by local Soweto women, is Cobble Centre, on the corner of 12th and Fourth Streets, Parkhurst.

Mall shopping hours are generally 0900-1700 (0900-1400 Sundays), although the bigger department stores and supermarkets may remain open to 1800. Value added tax (VAT) of 14% is levied on all goods sold (although this is largely ignored in the flea markets) and visitors can reclaim this upon departure, provided they have kept all receipts and filled in the appropriate point of purchase forms, where necessary.