List of Famous people born in Gauteng, South Africa
Greg Joseph
Greg Joseph is a South African professional American football placekicker for the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Florida Atlantic University. He made his NFL debut in 2018 with the Cleveland Browns. He has also been a member of the Miami Dolphins, Carolina Panthers, Tennessee Titans, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Magnus Malan
General Magnus André de Merindol Malan, was a South African military figure and politician during the last years of apartheid in South Africa. He served respectively as Minister of Defence in the cabinet of President P. W. Botha, Chief of the South African Defence Force (SADF), and Chief of the South African Army. Rising quickly through the lower ranks, he was appointed to strategic command positions. His tenure as chief of the defence force saw it increase in size, efficiency and capabilities. As P.W. Botha's cabinet minister, he posited a total communist onslaught, for which an encompassing national strategy was devised. This entailed placing policing, intelligence and aspects of civic affairs under control of generals. The ANC and Swapo were branded as terrorist organizations, while splinter groups were bolstered in neighbouring and Frontline States. Cross-border raids targeted suspected bases of insurgents or activists, while at home the army entered townships from 1984 onwards to stifle unrest. Elements in the Inkhata Freedom Party were used as a proxy force, and rogue soldiers and policemen in the CCB assassinated opponents.
Irmgard Bensusan
Irmgard Bensusan is a South African born Paralympic sprinter who now competes for Germany, mainly in T44 classification events. Bensusan competed at the 2016 Summer Paralympics where she won three silver medals in the 100, 200 and 400 metre sprints.
Graeme Codrington
Graeme Codrington is a South African author, futurist and strategy consultant, and a founding director of strategic insights firm, TomorrowToday.
Joel Pollak
Joel Barry Pollak is a South African-American conservative political commentator, writer, and attorney. He currently serves as the senior-editor-at-large for Breitbart News. In 2010, he was the Republican nominee for U.S. Congress from Illinois's 9th congressional district, losing to incumbent Democrat Jan Schakowsky with 31% of the vote.
Chris van Heerden
Chris van Heerden is a South African professional boxer and a former IBO welterweight champion.
David Bailie
David Bailie is an English actor, known for his performances on stage, television and film. In the 1960s and 1970s he worked for both the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he was an associate artist. On TV he played "Dask" in the 1977 Doctor Who serial The Robots of Death, and also appeared in Blake's 7. On film, he played the mute pirate Cotton in the Pirates of the Caribbean series. Bailie is also a professional photographer, specialising in portrait photography. He has a studio in West Kensington, London.
Herman Mashaba
Herman Samtseu Philip Mashaba is a South African politician, entrepreneur and the current president of ActionSA, a party he launched on 29 August 2020. He served as the Mayor of Johannesburg from 2016 to 2019. He is the founder of the hair product company Black Like Me. He is famous in South Africa for his life story: growing up and struggling against poverty and the apartheid government to open his own hair business, which became the biggest hair brand in South Africa, making him a millionaire. He publicly backed Mmusi Maimane in the Democratic Alliance leadership race. He wrote the autobiography Black Like You and recently he wrote his new memoir "The accidental mayor". Philosophically, he is a libertarian and "capitalist crusader" whose highest value is "individual freedom."
David Goldblatt
David Goldblatt HonFRPS was a South African photographer noted for his portrayal of South Africa during the period of apartheid. After apartheid had ended he concentrated more on the country's landscapes. What differentiates Goldblatt's body of work from those of other anti-apartheid artists is that he photographed issues that went beyond the violent events of apartheid and reflected the conditions that led up to them. His forms of protest have a subtlety that traditional documentary photographs may lack: "[M]y dispassion was an attitude in which I tried to avoid easy judgments. . . . This resulted in a photography that appeared to be disengaged and apolitical, but which was in fact the opposite." He has numerous publications to his name.
Santu Mofokeng
Santu Mofokeng was a South African news and documentary photographer who worked under the alias Mofokengâ. Mofokeng was a member of the Afrapix collective and won a Prince Claus Award.