The May 1994 elections brought in a black-majority government and an energized Johannesburg. Outdoor cafes and restaurants opened, local markets sprang up and the music scene was suddenly in ascendance. Even the hermetically sealed malls of the notoriously sterile, overwhelmingly white northern suburbs added grand extensions for people to come outside and enjoy themselves. In the new South Africa, people are measured less by the color of their skin than by the contents of their wallets. It just so happened that, thanks to years of apartheid, white people had more money than dark people.
Tourists tend to stay in the city's northern suburbs, where the hotels are.
Johannesburg is a young city, and if its youth was marred by cruelty, greed and racism, it remains, culturally speaking, a work in progress. It was founded in 1886 in response to a gold rush, and not unlike America's gold towns, it attracted fortune-hunters and others looking to restart their lives. Later, when Portugal surrendered its colonies of Mozambique and Angola, there was a huge influx of Portuguese. Even African arrivees, many of whom came desperately seeking work, quickly shed their tribal identity for Jo'burg's cosmopolitan one. The size and nature of the population, including that of Soweto, is much debated, with estimates ranging from 3 to 5 million.