City showdown: Crumbling Joburg is still where the money's at, but Cape Town is catching up

Semigration to Cape Town may have continued apace in 2023, a year when Johannesburg continued to suffer worse load shedding, water outages and potholes. But SA's economic hub isn't losing its financial crown to the Mother City just yet.

"Real gross domestic product at the municipal level indicates that the economy of the City of Johannesburg is more than 30% larger than that of the City of Cape Town," Christie Viljoen, economist and senior manager at PwC in SA, said, adding:

Even with a strong flow of human and financial capital to the Western Cape, it will take a long time for Cape Town to narrow the large gap between the size of its economy and that of Johannesburg.