Johannesburg, Transvaal, S. Africa (see 15.431). At the 1911 census the pop. within the municipal area was 237,104, compared with 155,642 in 1904. In the interval Johannesburg had outstripped Cape Town in number of inhabitants and had become the largest city in Africa S. of Egypt. In 1919 the pop. was estimated at 260,000, of whom 149,750 were whites (the white pop. in 1904 having been 83,903).
Though other industries were developed the life of Johannesburg continued to be bound up with the working of the Witwatersrand gold-mines, and it is the business centre for the other municipalities on the Rand, some of which grew at a more rapid rate than Johannesburg itself. Improvement in the amenities of the town were carried out with energy, largely the result of the activities of the town council which acquired and worked all public utility services and possessed live stock and produce markets. New law courts, a new town hall and a municipal art gallery (the last in Joubert Park) were completed between 1910 and 1915. Eighty acres of Milner Park were given in 1916 by the town council as a site for a university; owing to the World War building did not begin till 1920. The proposed university became a constituent college of the university of South Africa, and includes the S.A. School of Mines and Technology (situated in Plein Square), and, since 1919, schools of anatomy and art. Many street improvements were effected, the suburbs provided with open spaces, and churches, clubs and handsome business premises erected by private enterprise. The Asiatic and native locations at Vrededorp, little over a mile from the centre of the city, were however allowed to remain in an insanitary and shocking condition. The S.A. Asiatic Inquiry Commission after a visit in 1920 wrote of the location, “It is difficult to conceive of a worse slum existing in any part of the world.”
Johannesburg retains its position as the chief horse-racing centre in South Africa, and from 1919, when an aerodrome was laid out, it also became a centre for air travel.
The rateable value of the municipality for 1919–20 was £34,358,000 (including £14,565,000 land value) and the rate 7d. in the £ on site values. The municipal income in 1918–9 was £1,988,000, the expenditure £1,934,000. In that year the net profit on the trading departments' transactions (gas, electricity, tramways, water and markets) was £149,000.
Johannesburg was the scene of serious riots in 1913–4 arising out of strikes by white miners and railwaymen and of anti-German riots in 1915 when, following the sinking of the “Lusitania,” property valued at fully £500,000 was destroyed. In 1917 the first S.A. trade union congress was held in the city. In 1919 there were strikes and disturbances among the native workers in the mines.