From Africa’s largest five-star hotel to an abandoned and empty building

The Johannesburg Sun Hotel, once the largest five-star hotel in Africa, was abandoned less than two decades after opening its doors and has remained empty since. 

When it opened its doors in 1986, the Johannesburg Sun and Towers on the corner of Jeppe and Small streets was said to be a “taste of life in the 21st century”, with an artificial urban lake and personal computers in every room. 

However, as the surrounding CBD decayed and businesses moved their offices to Sandton and Rosebank, the hotel struggled to fill its rooms and was sold twice before its doors were shut for good. 

Now, the building stands empty in the heart of Johannesburg as a symbol of the optimism of the 1980s and the perceived opulence of the future. 

Designed in 1982 and opened in 1986, it was the largest hotel in Africa, with over 800 rooms. Southern Sun Hotels built the new building, which was linked via a pool deck to the existing Tollman Towers Hotel. 

The new 40-storey tower, designed in the late modernist style, was dominated by the blue mirror glass curtain walling.

Johannesburg Sun was the most valuable property development undertaken by Southern Sun – even bigger than Sun City at the planning stage and more valuable on paper. 

With 830 rooms, bars, eateries, conference rooms, mezzanine shopping, public terraces, a private lake with an island restaurant, and a 34-floor mirrored hanging wall, the hotel was Joburg’s “hotel of the future”, according to the Sunday Times. 

CEO of Southern Sun at the time, Sol Kerzner, told the FM that demand for hotel space in South Africa’s economic hub was only set to grow into the 21st century. 

To cover this growing demand, Southern Sun was busy creating Sandton Towers in the new emergent Sandton City, developed by Liberty, to establish a new economic hub. 

However, Johannesburg Sun stole all the limelight. The hotel, which cost R125 million to build, opened its doors to much fanfare in 1986. 

It was the height of luxury. Its Suki Hama restaurant was the first authentic Japanese restaurant in Johannesburg, employing eight chefs from Tokyo. 

In a world first, each room in the hotel came with a personal computer on which guests could monitor trading on the JSE, set a wake-up call, and pay their hotel bill, all without leaving their room and before the internet. 

Aside from Suki Hama, it also had a Lakeside restaurant with Christofle silverware, and guests could indulge in fine dining with French-trained chefs at St James. 

Inescapable decline

As with the Carlton Centre, the height of luxury in Johannesburg’s CBD did not last long, with the last guest checking out of the hotel in 1997. 

The Johannesburg Sun was not able to escape the steady decline of Johannesburg in the late 1980s and 1990s as South Africa underwent its economic transition. 

Companies moved their offices to Sandton or Rosebank, and wealthier residents began moving to the city’s northern suburbs for greater safety. 

Southern Sun steadily began scaling down operations at the hotel to make it profitable. It reduced the number of rooms available and limited its luxurious extras. 

However, the hotel lost its main reason for existing by reducing the luxury on offer. While the building itself looked modern and luxurious, life on the inside slowly deteriorated. 

In 1997, Southern Sun sold the hotel to Holiday Inn, which turned it into a Garden Court with only 270 rooms in use. 

The lack of demand for hotel space on the CBD eventually resulted in the hotel closing its doors completely, with Holiday Inn barely keeping its doors open for more than a year. 

In 2002, the hotel made a shocking resurgence, briefly opening to host the Earth Summit 2002 as KwaDukuza eGoli Hotel.

The hotel was owned by Mark Whitehead of Whitehead Enterprises. It hosted 2,000 police officers, but their stay was marred by a murder in the hotel and severe problems with the physical systems of the building.

It went out of business once again, this time for good. The Johannesburg Sun still gleams in the CBD’s skyline, unbranded and without any occupants. A symbol of a bygone era. 

Southern Sun’s 15-kilometre mistake

While Southern Sun was busy developing its Johannesburg Sun Hotel with much anticipation, the company was also busy building Sandton Towers near Sandton City. 

First opened in 1973, Sandton City was developed to be another economic node in Johannesburg – an alternative CBD. 

Sandton City has steadily grown alongside Nelson Mandela Square into one of Africa’s largest retail complexes.  

The centre also has a twenty-one-story concrete office building that has been reclad alongside the Atrium building in recent years. 

The shopping centre was first developed by Rapp and Maister before being taken over by Liberty Life, now Liberty Holdings, and managed by its property arm, Liberty Two Degrees. 

Its rise as the commercial hub of South Africa and Africa’s richest square mile has been coupled with the decline of the city’s old CBD. 

The contrasting fortunes of these two developments from the same period show just how much Johannesburg has changed in the past forty years. 

In response to a tweet from property broker Ask Ash, Southern Sun recounted the fall of the Johannesburg Sun and the corresponding rise of the Sandton Towers. 

“She sure was a beautiful hotel and one of the biggest we’ve ever built. Sadly, these days we call her the ‘15 kilometre mistake’,” the company said. 

“The hotels are 15km apart, but their lives over the last 40 years couldn’t have been more different. We eventually sold the Johannesburg Sun in the late 90s after trying everything to keep her going.” 

Today, the Sandton Sun and Towers and Garden Court Sandton City have a combined 1,100 rooms, and together with the Santon Convention Centre, they are the heart of hospitality in Sandton. 

“As the old saying goes: location, location, location,” Southern Sun said.