The construction of Eastgate began in 1976, the same year the Soweto uprisings roused protests across South Africa. The country’s first super-regional mall opened three years later, despite the economic uncertainty of that period.
In the years since, “mall-ification” in South Africa has been in full swing. The country is among those with the most shopping centres per capita in the world and research shows that after the 1990s its malls are bigger and bigger.