Cape Town on Track to Overtake Jo’burg as Most Populous City in SA

The Mother City could soon beat Johannesburg to the number-one spot in terms of population size in South Africa.

This is according to Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), which recently released data on municipal populations.

Stats SA also provides historical population figures, using census data from 1996, 2001, 2011, and 2022.

According to the data, in 1996, the three biggest cities in South Africa were eThekwini, which had a population of 2.78 million, followed by Johannesburg and Cape Town, which were neck-and-neck, having populations of 2.64 million and 2.56 million, respectively.

By 2011, both Johannesburg and Cape Town had overtaken eThekwini, with the number of people living in Johannesburg being 4.43 million, the population of Cape Town at 3.74 million, and eThekwini at 3.48 million.

But between 2011 and 2022, Cape Town’s population growth far outstripped both Johannesburg and eThekwini, with the number of people living in Cape Town growing by about a million people in that period, Johannesburg seeing an increase of about 400 000, and eThekwini about 500 000.

In 2022, Johannesburg’s population was 4.80 million, Cape Town’s was 4.77 million, while eThekwini sat on 4.24 million.

On current trends it is likely that the next time Stats SA does a review of municipal populations, Cape Town will have overtaken Johannesburg. The Common Sense recently reported that the population of assessed taxpayers in Cape Town was now higher than in Johannesburg, the first time in modern South African history that this is the case. The economic centre of gravity in South Africa is slowly shifting towards Cape Town, away from Gauteng and Johannesburg, as poor municipal governance in Gauteng has led to an exodus of skilled people and business owners to other parts of the country, particularly the Western Cape.