South Africa

New R27 billion ‘city’ with 43,000 houses coming to South Africa’s richest province

Shaun Jacobs • 15 October 2025

Construction has begun on the Southern Farms Mega City Project in Johannesburg, which is set to build 43,000 houses with a total value of R27 billion.

Located in the south of the city, the mixed-use development has been a long time coming and is set to form part of numerous ‘mega cities’ being built around Gauteng to address the province’s housing shortage.

Despite the deterioration of basic services, Gauteng remains South Africa’s economic hub, generating around a third of economic activity in the country and home to many of its largest companies.

On Monday, 13 October, property broker Ash Müller revealed that construction has begun at Southern Farms after the site handover in May 2025.

The Gauteng Provincial Government said it would take a decade to deliver the project, which aims to provide housing in the south of Joburg and uplift communities in the area by providing economic opportunities.

This ‘mega city’ follows the launch of the Southern Farms Biodiversity Development Project in 2023, which aims to limit the impact of the construction on the surrounding environment.

So far, the overarching project has taken over a decade of planning before construction of the housing began in earnest at the Bushkoppies Site Camp.

Central to the project is the construction of 43,000 houses over an area of 4,000 hectares to provide housing for Joburg’s growing population.

The housing will be coupled with schools, sports facilities, libraries, clinics, taxi ranks, roads, and other bulk infrastructure to service the residential area.

The mixed-use land project will benefit areas like Diepkloof, Freedom Park, Eldorado Park, and Naturena. It will encompass seven precincts, offering various types of housing and non-residential properties.

Southern Farms is being developed by construction company Sephahaphaha Trading and Projects, whose owner, Sedima Moseamedi, hopes it will boost local businesses in the area.

Müller said Johannesburg has a housing shortage of around 1.3 million homes, which will take decades to address at current construction rates.

As a result, Southern Farms Mega City will be constructed alongside other megacities such as, Cullinan Mega City, Daggafontein Mega City, Goudrand Mega City, John Dube Mega City and Stinkwater Mega City.

These developments are all designed to include significant infrastructure development to service thousands of residential units.

All of them are intended to be mixed-use developments, with residential buildings coupled with commercial and industrial components.

The five megacities are located on at least one of Gauteng’s major transport corridors and will feature schools, universities, hospitals, and transport hubs.

These represent a move away from sporadic and uncoordinated developments to purposely planned and developed areas that are intended to be as self-sufficient as possible.

City of Gold losing its shine

The construction of these megacities is also meant to alleviate pressure on Gauteng’s existing infrastructure, particularly Joburg’s.

South Africa’s richest city has failed to invest in maintaining and upgrading its infrastructure to cope with a growing population.

As the country’s economy has stagnated, an increasing number of individuals have moved to the city in the hope of employment.

Coupled with immigration, this has put immense pressure on infrastructure, which is coming to the end of its design life and has not been properly maintained.

As a result, areas in the city are hit with sporadic water and electricity outages due to the failure of local infrastructure.

In some cases, parts of the city have been without water for up to nine weeks, and nearly 100,000 electricity outages have been reported in nine months.

Over 5,000 of these reports have been serious enough to include the outage of an entire substation, cutting off power to multiple areas at a time.

This crisis is largely self-inflicted, with the city’s infrastructure unable to cope with the increased demand for water and electricity.

Joburg’s water crisis makes this clear, with Rand Water and the Department of Water and Sanitation having clarified that the city receives enough water to serve its inhabitants.

However, around 45% of this water is lost on its way to the end user due to leakages, illegal connections, or other infrastructure failures.

Businesses are becoming increasingly concerned about the state of Johannesburg, with the city home to the headquarters of many of the country’s largest companies and responsible for 16% of South Africa’s GDP.

Business for South Africa (B4SA) has said it will make a decision in November regarding whether it can help the government turn around the city and how it plans on doing so.

Johannesburg has had 10 changes of mayor since the ANC lost its majority for the first time in 2016, and its suburbs and townships now suffer from regular power and water outages.

It’s currently run by a coalition led by the ANC. The DA, the second-biggest party both nationally and in the city council, is seeking to take Johannesburg back in local government elections next year, with Helen Zille as its mayoral candidate.