South Africa · Africa
Moving to Johannesburg
Johannesburg quick facts
South Africa at a glance
Sub-Saharan Africa
Economy
World Bank · 2025Religion
% of populationCIA World Factbook / national censuses
Cost of living in Johannesburg
Can you move to South Africa?
Pick your passport to see whether you can enter South Africa — and what it takes to stay.
Entry rules come from github.com/imorte/passport-index-data, updated 17 February 2026. They change without notice — confirm with the official immigration service before booking.
Getting set up in South Africa
Visas: critical skills, work permits & remote work
Most Western passport holders are stamped in for up to 90 days on arrival, free — and that stamp permits no work at all, including remote work for a foreign employer. Three routes matter beyond it. The Critical Skills Work Visa is the prize: if your occupation appears on the official list you are awarded the full 100 points automatically, the visa runs up to five years, and it feeds a direct permanent-residence application under section 27(b). The General Work Visa now runs on that same 100-point system, gazetted with effect from 8 October 2024, scored on qualification level, salary, experience, language and employer status. The Remote Work Visa, in the regulations since 2024 and taking applications since 2025, needs foreign-sourced income of roughly ZAR 650,796 a year — the figure in the Home Affairs notice, and widely misquoted — and runs up to three years. Across all of them the binding constraint is the Department of Home Affairs itself: processing is slow enough that the Department has kept a rolling concession in place, most recently Immigration Directive No. 7 of 2026, which protects people with pending long-term applications from 1 April 2026 until 30 June 2027.
Read the full step-by-step guideDriving & getting around Johannesburg
Johannesburg is a driving city and pretending otherwise costs you money and time. The Gautrain is genuinely good but it is one line; Rea Vaya covers a handful of corridors; minibus taxis run the city but are not a newcomer's first move. Uber and Bolt fill the rest cheaply. South Africa drives on the LEFT, and you may drive on a valid foreign licence provided it is printed in English and carries your photograph and signature — otherwise you need an International Driving Permit alongside it. Once you take up residence you must convert: you cannot renew a foreign licence from inside South Africa, and permanent residents have five years to do it. Conversion needs a traffic register number from a registering authority first, then a DLTC visit with form DL1 and an eye test — no K53 driving test. Two Gauteng-specific facts: the e-toll gantries stopped charging on 11 April 2024, and there is still no compulsory third-party insurance in South Africa, so private cover is effectively essential.
Read the full step-by-step guideOpening a bank account & clearing FICA
The gate is FICA — the Financial Intelligence Centre Act — which requires every bank to verify who you are and, at most institutions, where you live, on a document no older than three months. Identity is easy; the address is what stops people, because you have no South African utility bill in week one. Three workable answers: a signed lease, a letter from your landlord or employer, or a free sworn affidavit commissioned at any SAPS station. Or sidestep it: Standard Bank's published FICA requirements for adult foreign nationals do not include a proof-of-address document, and TymeBank asks for none, opening an account at a supermarket kiosk in about ten minutes with a card printed on the spot. Johannesburg is the country's banking capital, so every head office and specialist non-resident desk is here — which mostly matters if you have something unusual to arrange. Bringing money in is easy and stays repatriable; taking it out is where SARB exchange control and a SARS tax-compliance check apply.
Read the full step-by-step guideHealthcare: medical aid, private hospitals & the public system
South Africa runs two health systems side by side. The private one is fast, well-equipped and expensive; the public one is free or nearly free, treats about four fifths of the population, and is overloaded. Almost every professional newcomer uses private care, which means choosing between a South African medical scheme — a regulated, community-rated fund that must accept you and must cover Prescribed Minimum Benefits — and an international expat insurance policy. Johannesburg has the deepest private hospital market in the country: Netcare Milpark is a major trauma referral centre, and Mediclinic Sandton, Life Fourways and Netcare Sunninghill cover the northern suburbs. On the public side, Chris Hani Baragwanath in Soweto is one of the largest hospitals in the world, and Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic has been running at reduced capacity since a 2021 fire, with the last damaged wards scheduled to return during 2026. The National Health Insurance Act is law but is tied up in litigation and is not operating, so it should not change any decision you make now.
Read the full step-by-step guideGetting a SIM, data & home fibre
The SIM costs almost nothing; activating it is the errand. RICA requires the card to be registered against a verified identity and a South African address before it will carry traffic — the same proof-of-address wall as banking, hit on day one instead of week three. Buy prepaid, not a contract: contracts need a South African ID and local credit history you do not have. Vodacom and MTN have the strongest Gauteng coverage and both are headquartered in the metro, MTN in Fairland and Vodacom at its Midrand campus; Cell C and Telkom undercut them on price with patchier reach. Data is expensive by global standards, so always convert airtime into a bundle rather than browsing on raw airtime rates. For home internet, Johannesburg has probably the best fibre coverage in Africa, with Vumatel, Openserve, Frogfoot, MetroFibre and Herotel laying the infrastructure and a competitive market of ISPs reselling over it. Buy an eSIM before you fly so you land connected.
Read the full step-by-step guideIncome tax, SARS residency & the municipal bill
South Africa taxes tax residents on worldwide income and non-residents only on South African-source income, at progressive rates from 18% to 45%. You become a resident either by being 'ordinarily resident' — South Africa is the place you naturally return to — or by failing a purely mechanical physical-presence day count. The tax year runs 1 March to the end of February, which quietly wrecks the planning of anyone used to a calendar year. Residents working abroad get the first R1.25 million of foreign employment income exempt under section 10(1)(o)(ii), subject to strict day tests. There is no provincial or municipal income tax in South Africa — but Johannesburg's municipal bill behaves like one, and it resets every 1 July with the City's budget. For 2026/27 the City approved an 8.63% electricity increase, 12.5% on water, 11% on sanitation and 6.2% on refuse, with property rates up 3.6%, the first R350,000 of a home's market value excluded from rates, and a 10% discount for paying the year's rates upfront. The prepaid electricity fixed charge is the item that surprises tenants most.
Read the full step-by-step guideEach guide has verified costs, timelines, required documents, and the non-obvious gotchas — sourced from official government pages. Last verified August 2026.
Essential English phrases
Reading a list isn’t learning it. Globe Quest turns these into a trainer — hear each phrase spoken, drill them with spaced repetition, and get scored as you say them out loud.
What to know before you go
Crime here is a suburb-level question, not a city-level one
CriticalJohannesburg's risk varies enormously street by street, and the useful move is to get specific rather than anxious. SAPS publishes crime figures per police precinct every quarter — look up the station that covers the suburb you are considering before you sign anything. In practice: almost every northern-suburbs home is on an armed-response contract, boom-gated streets and Community Policing Forum WhatsApp groups are normal, and carjacking clusters on the M1/M2 freeway corridors and at big intersections rather than randomly. Do not sit bumper-to-bumper at a red light, never stop in the road outside your own gate, and vary your arrival times.
Water is now the utility you plan around, not electricity
CriticalNational load shedding has been suspended since 2025 — Eskom passed a full year without a single cut in May 2026. Water replaced it. Rand Water runs multi-week bulk maintenance shutdowns — the 2026 programme on its Palmiet and Zuikerbosch systems ran from 29 May to mid-July — Johannesburg Water loses close to half its supply to leaks, and reservoirs and towers on high ground drain first. A tank with a booster pump is the Joburg equivalent of what an inverter was three years ago: ask any prospective landlord whether the property has one.
Check who actually sells you electricity before you rent
ImportantMost of Johannesburg is supplied by City Power, the municipal utility, but Eskom supplies several areas directly — Soweto, Orange Farm, Ennerdale, Diepsloot and pockets of the north. It decides who you phone during an outage, and whether Eskom 'load reduction' applies to you: that is a separate thing from load shedding, cutting overloaded feeders in the 05:00–09:00 and 17:00–22:00 peaks to stop transformers burning out. Ask the question before you sign.
You will drive, and e-tolls are gone
ImportantJohannesburg is enormously spread out and public transport does not knit it together. The Gautrain is excellent on its one line (Park Station–Rosebank–Sandton–Midrand–Centurion–Pretoria–Hatfield, plus the OR Tambo spur, airport to Sandton in about 14 minutes), Rea Vaya BRT covers specific corridors, and Uber and Bolt are cheap. Everything else is a car. Good news: the Gauteng e-toll gantries stopped charging on 11 April 2024 and outstanding debt has since been written off, so ignore any guide that still tells you to buy an e-tag.
You are at 1,753 metres — it will catch you out
Good to knowAt 1,753 m Johannesburg sits well below Mexico City or Bogotá, but it is high enough to matter and nobody warns you. Expect to be breathless on your first runs, to get drunk faster than you expect, to sunburn in winter, and to need moisturiser. Summers (October–March) bring spectacular late-afternoon thunderstorms and hail that dents cars; winters are dry, brilliantly sunny and genuinely cold at dawn, in houses that almost never have central heating. Buy a heater and an electric blanket in April, not June.
The city is greener and more walkable in patches than you were told
Good to knowJoburg sits inside one of the largest man-made urban forests on earth, and there are real pockets of street life: Parkhurst's 4th Avenue, Melville's 7th Street, Greenside, Linden, Rosebank's Sunday market, Victoria Yards and Maboneng. Walk those, drive between them. The inner city is more nuanced than its reputation — Braamfontein and Newtown are genuinely alive by day — but it is not where a newcomer should live blind.
Top industries & employers
Banking & financial services
Standard Bank, FirstRand, Absa, Investec, Discovery
The JSE — Africa's largest stock exchange — sits in Sandton, and nearly every major South African bank and insurer is headquartered within a few kilometres of it.
Mining & resources
Anglo American, Sibanye-Stillwater, Gold Fields, Harmony
The reason the city exists. The gold has largely moved on, but the head offices, engineering firms and mining-finance ecosystem stayed.
Telecoms & technology
MTN, Vodacom (Midrand), Microsoft SA, BCX, Entelect
Gauteng is where enterprise tech and telecoms sit; Cape Town gets the consumer startups, Joburg gets the large-scale corporate engineering work.
Media & broadcasting
MultiChoice/DStv, SABC, Primedia, Arena Holdings
Randburg and Auckland Park form the country's broadcast belt — pay-TV, radio and most national newsrooms.
Professional & legal services
Big Four firms, Webber Wentzel, Bowmans, ENSafrica
The corporate advisory market for the whole subcontinent runs from Sandton and Rosebank, including most immigration and tax practices.
Logistics & aviation
OR Tambo International, Transnet, Imperial, DSV
OR Tambo is Africa's busiest airport and the inland freight hub feeding Durban's port up the N3 corridor.
Where to go in Johannesburg
Constitution Hill
Culture · Braamfontein
The old fort and prison that held Gandhi and Mandela, now the site of the Constitutional Court — the single best half-day in the city.
Local tip: Do the guided tour rather than wandering; the Women's Jail section is what people remember, and the Court's own art collection is free to view.
Apartheid Museum
Culture · Ormonde
A rigorous, unsentimental account of how the system was built and dismantled. You are issued a race classification card at the door.
Local tip: Allow three hours minimum and go in the morning. Pair it with the Soweto route rather than cramming both into an afternoon.
Soweto & Vilakazi Street
Neighborhood · Soweto
A city of well over a million people, and the only street on earth where two Nobel laureates lived — Mandela and Tutu.
Local tip: Go with a local guide or a cycling tour the first time. Eat at a shisa nyama on the weekend; that is when Soweto is actually itself.
Sandton & Nelson Mandela Square
Landmark · Sandton
The de facto business district — the JSE, the banks, the hotels. Dense, glass, and often called the richest square mile in Africa.
Local tip: The Gautrain station puts you in the middle of it; if you are here for meetings, staying in Sandton and never renting a car is a viable strategy.
Victoria Yards
Hidden gemFood · Lorentzville
A restored industrial block east of the CBD housing artists' studios, urban farms, a distillery and small food traders.
Local tip: First Sunday of the month is the open day and the only time to see the studios; park inside the gates and it is a relaxed, safe visit.
The Cradle of Humankind
Nature · Mogale City (~45 min)
A UNESCO World Heritage site of dolomite caves that has produced more early-hominin fossils than anywhere else on the planet.
Local tip: Book Sterkfontein Caves ahead and do Maropeng the same day; combine with lunch in the Magaliesberg to make the drive worth it.
Emergency numbers in Johannesburg
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