These are the busiest shopping malls in South Africa – including the one the rich love to visit
The Mall of Africa in Waterfall City, north of Joburg, is still the country’s busiest shopping mall in 2024 – but Sandton City is where the country’s affluent shoppers like to go.
This is according to Lighstone Property’s latest assessment of traffic volumes at South Africa’s malls, measured in terms of vehicle traffic at the retail centres themselves.
According to the group, South Africa’s shopping centres have recovered from Covid 19, weathered challenging economic conditions and social interventions, and are now adapting to the challenges of e-commerce.
“Retailers are benefiting from higher foot traffic, and there are fewer vacancies in shopping centres—although consumer spending is marginally down year-on-year.”
Mohit Narotam, head of Retail at Lightstone, broke down the data, singling out the top three most visited malls in the country:
- Mall of Africa (Gauteng)
- Sandton City/Nelson Mandela Square (Gauteng)
- Gateway Theatre of Shopping (KZN)
The Mall of Africa in Gauteng was South Africa’s busiest shopping centre based on vehicle stops at the centre, with Sandton City/Nelson Mandela Square and KwaZulu-Natal’s Gateway Theatre of Shopping not far behind for the period January to August 2024.
Notably, while the Mall of Africa was the busiest by this measure, it is, in fact, the smallest centre of the three, with 131,000 square metres of retail space, Narotam said.
This is less than Sandton City/Nelson Mandela Square’s combined 146,000 sqm and well short of Gateway Theatre of Shopping’s 176,398 sqm.
Fourways Mall, also in Sandton and not far from Mall of Africa, is South Africa’s largest centre with 178,000 sqm of retail space. However, unlike the top malls, it has struggled with visits and is experiencing lower ‘dwell time’ from shoppers.
Looking at the top 3 malls, Mall of Africa has had the highest traffic volumes every month (to August), except for July, where Gateway ranked tops.
Mall of Africa is ideally located in Midrand and is just off the N1, which links Johannesburg and Pretoria. It is not far from the intersection linking the N1 with the N3, which connects the east, west, and south to the north.
This makes it accessible to shoppers and covers quite a large region, catering to greater Joburg, Midrand and Centurion.
However, when looking at the types of shoppers drawn to the centre – particularly in terms of income level – it is clear from the data that Mall of Africa attracts more lower and middle-income shoppers relative to the other malls.
When looking at high income shoppers, Gateway edges out Sandton City—but in the affluent market, Sandton City stretches far past the others.
According to Narotam, Sandton City also has the highest dwell time, with shopping hanging around longer than at Mall of Africa and Gateway.
Mall of Africa is also struggling to fully recover from the 2019 pandemic, he said.
“While most shopping centres have recently reported higher foot traffic, our data suggested vehicle visits to two centres – Fourways Mall and Mall of Africa – have not in fact recovered to pre-Covid levels.”
Narotam noted that there are some caveats to the analysis.
Specifically that many visit malls are by public transport or by foot, so foot traffic could exceed vehicle traffic. This is particularly notable at Mall of Africa which has more lower-income and middle-income shoppers (who are more likely to use public transport).
The data may also reflect a growing shift to online shopping, which accelerated during Covid, and might be leading to more permanent shopper behavioural change, both in terms of number of visits and dwell times, he said.
The average number of mall visits per vehicle per year was 139 in 2019, but this had fallen to 128 in 2023.
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