The City Sightseeing Bus; Gauteng: topless travel that lets you hop on and hop off around Johannesburg and Soweto.

The cheerful City Sightseeing red buses are a feature in nearly 100 cities on 6 continents, giving tourists a new perspective on their destination all over the world, so it’s no surprise that their open-top bus tours are also found in Johannesburg.  

TThey run all day, every day, with onboard commentary, fascinating stops on 3 routes and easy access to all the attractions, both in the former ‘white’ city to the north and the vibrant, bustling city-within-a-city that is Soweto, in the south-west. 

Here are some of the attractions you can hop off to explore: 

From the Top of Africa in the CBD, you’ll get stunning panoramic views of Johannesburg and beyond. The spacious wraparound viewing deck is on the top floor of the 50-storey, 223m-tall Carlton Centre, which in January 2019 was still Africa’s tallest office building – at one-and-a-half times the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza.  

That record is likely to be broken by the Leonardo, however – a mixed-use office and luxury residential tower rising in Sandton to the north that is set for completion in 2019, and which will top out, it is rumoured, at 227m. If those rumours prove correct, the Leonardo will claim the title of Africa’s tallest building and complete Sandton’s ninja-turtle set in one fell swoop (the commerce hub already has buildings named the Michelangelo, the Raphael and the Donatello). 

Interestingly, the best place to start most City Sightseeing tours is in Rosebank, also part of the ‘northern suburbs,’ and the company operates a shuttle service to Rosebank from a selection of Sandton hotels (see their website for details). So although the City Sightseeing tours operate in suburbs to the south, if you’re staying in Sandton you can explore the eclectic spectrum of architecture that is transforming the country’s financial capital on foot, before you grab the shuttle to Rosebank to embark of a tour of older attractions like the Carlton in the CBD. 

If vintage cars and antique vehicles are your thing, then while you’re downtown you’ll also be fascinated by the James Hall Museum of Transport, showcasing historic vehicles from ox-wagons, horse-drawn carriages, trams, trolleys and steam trains to Johannesburg’s very first car – a sexy green 1900 Clement-Panhard. 

You’ll be poignantly reminded of South Africa’s turbulent, conflict-ridden past at the Apartheid Museum, where you’ll be taken on an emotional roller-coaster ride through the oppressive system and the long struggle to overthrow it. A visit will no doubt leave you sombre, but it gives visitors an important perspective on a past that most South Africans are still struggling to overcome. 

Nearby is Gold Reef City, where you can take an underground mine tour to get a feel for early Johannesburg, or ride real roller-coasters in the theme park. 

If you want to learn more about the beginnings of the human race, spend some time at the Origins Centre at the University of the Witwatersrand. It’s child-friendly and explains our origins in a user-friendly and comprehensive way. Check out the bookshop and great little café. 

This route is the Red Tour, and it also takes you around other inner-city attractions like Constitution Hill, the mining district downtown, the Newtown Arts Precinct and SAB World of Beer, and through the dense urban flatland of historic Braamfontein and Hillbrow.  

There’s also a Green Tour, taking in the leafy suburbs from Rosebank to Braamfontein. Stops include Zoo Lake, the Ditsong (South African) National Museum of Military History, the Johannesburg Zoo and Constitution Hill, where the route intersects with the Red Tour. 

The Soweto Tour is your opportunity to see how most South Africans live: the sprawling dormitory township to the south-west of Jo’burg, once apartheid’s dumping ground for black workers outside the ‘white’ suburbs, is now a vibrant, modern city-within-the-city. 

The Soweto Tour stops at all the top attractions in this cultural melting pot, including famous Vilakazi Street, the only street once home to 2 Nobel Peace Prize winners: late former president Nelson Mandela and Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. It’s a vibey spot full of taverns serving local food and drink, and when you’ve sampled their wares you can hop back on the bus to visit the famous ‘calabash’ that is FNB Stadium, the largest football stadium in Africa. 

Or make a stop at Orlando Stadium, the country’s first football stadium that was open to black people and which became the site of many historic anti-apartheid rallies. The Orlando Towers – cooling towers that remain after a power station became obsolete – are a prime adventure-sports venue, offering bungee-jumping, abseiling and base-jumping. 

The Soweto Tour route also includes Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, the largest in Africa and third-largest in the world, and the historic suburb of Diepkloof. Then there’s the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum in Orlando West (commemorating the first school child killed by police in the 1976 student uprisings, which began in Soweto as a protest against Afrikaans as the medium of instruction). 

Be sure not to miss the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication in Kliptown, either. It houses the Kliptown Open-Air Museum and is the spot where South Africa’s Freedom Charter was signed (an anti-apartheid blueprint adopted in 1955 by a multiracial coalition fighting National Party rule; it had a major influence on South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution, adopted in 1996). 

Between the 3 tour options, you can take in a lot of Jo’burg’s history – and all of its exciting modern attractions – by spending a few days hopping on and off City Sightseeing buses.