South Africa is home to the mega-mall. Increasingly more and more shopping malls are being built to serve the needs of any sizeable community. These generally have long opening hours and parking for hundreds of cars. Apart from shops, they feature post offices, banks, cinemas, restaurants, fast food courts and supermarkets. The Gateway Mall in Durban is reputedly the largest shopping mall in the southern hemisphere and coming in second is the Canal Walk Mall in Cape Town.
In the tourist areas, malls feature shops selling crafts and souvenirs - particularly at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront where there are a number of upscale African art and curio shops, and in Johannesburg’s Rosebank Mall, which is also home to an African craft market.
Away from the malls, African curios markets can be found in all the cities and along the coast. The bewildering variety of items to buy from across the continent include wooden sculptures, hand-crafted wire objects, cloth and batiks, jewellery, carved soapstone products, drums, ‘Africanised’ stationary and homeware and a vast range of pictorial books on Africa. Gold and diamonds make for good buys in South Africa and local wine, brandy and liqueur are cheap and usually excellent.
On departure at the airports or land borders, visitors can claim 14% VAT refunds on any unused purchases over the value of R250 bought in South Africa. You need to show your passport, flight ticket and original tax invoice for the item to the customs officer at the VAT refund desk. For more information look online (website: www.taxrefunds.co.za).
Shopping hours: Mon-Fri 0900-1700, Sat 0900-1400, although there is an increasing trend to open later and all weekend in major tourist spots and in the large shopping malls. In the cities, there are 24-hour convenience stores.
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