This is South Africa’s richest city – and the race isn’t even close

 ·1 Feb 2025

The Western Cape’s citizens are the richest, earning the highest average income and spending the highest on household expenditure in the country. And among the major metros, the City of Cape Town stretches above the rest.

This is according to Stats SA’s 2023 Income and Expenditure of Households report, which measures the earnings and spending habits of South Africans across the country.

The Western Cape is the wealthiest province in terms of household expenditure, spending an average of R229,363 annually, more than double the average amount spent in South Africa

Gauteng is the second wealthiest, spending an average of R170,628. South Africa’s most populated province had the largest share of total household consumption expenditure.

The Western Cape and Gauteng comprise half of the country’s household expenditure.

Additionally, the Western Cape had the highest average household income, at R356,651, which was even significantly higher than Gauteng’s average household income, R250,646. 

Only the average household incomes of the Western Cape and Gauteng were higher than the national average. 

The City of Cape Town, in the Western Cape, is also the wealthiest metro in the country.

It had the highest average and median household income compared to other metropolitan areas, with an average of R387,881 and a median of R169,599. 

The City of Cape Town also had the highest average and median household consumption expenditure, with an average of R248,538 and a median of R140,523. 

The Western Cape also had the highest average expenditure in many of Stats SA’s smaller spending categories. 

The Western Cape spends the highest average amount on food, beverages, tobacco, and narcotics (R32,959). However, spending on those items only makes up 14.4% of total expenditures, the lowest percentage of all the other provinces. 

Similarly, the Western Cape spends more on transport, health, furnishing and household maintenance, housing and utilities than other provinces. 

While Johannesburg has the most millionaires in Africa, the number of millionaires living within the city’s boundaries has decreased by 44% over the past decade.

This equates to a loss of roughly 21,965 millionaires from 2013.

Many of them moved to the Western Cape, with many shifting to the Western Cape’s coastal areas. 

During the previous decade, the millionaire population in the Garden Route and the Whale Coast also grew by 32% and 35%, respectively.

In the last ten years, the Winelands region also saw a 28% increase in the number of millionaires residing there, and this trend is expected to accelerate in the 2030s.

Between 2015 and 2023, expenditures experienced a negative real growth rate, with spending in the Western Cape decreasing by 6.4%. This coincided with a real growth rate in income of 6.5%. 

Stats SA’s data also exposed the significant difference between average and median household spending. This is due to the massive inequality in South Africa. 

Yet, with roughly the same number of millionaires in Gauteng and the Western Cape, according to the latest African Wealth Report 2024 by Henley & Partners and New World Wealth, the Western Cape is the much wealthier province.

The study further found that South Africans spend the most on housing utilities, food and non-alcoholic beverages, transport, and insurance and financial services, which account for roughly 75% of their expenditures. 

Other key findings included that male-headed households account for 60% of all spending in South Africa. Furthermore, average household consumption expenditure decreased by 7.2% in real terms over the last eight years. 

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