Johannesburg or Kigali?

Neither city is a beach destination. The difference is where the water lies. From Johannesburg, the nearest swimming outside a pool is at the dams around Hartbeespoort, and the coast needs a flight. From Kigali you can reach Lake Muhazi in about an hour for lunch by the water, and Lake Kivu at Rubavu has real lake beaches about three hours away, best done with a night's stay.

Johannesburg gives you much more to eat. There is meat grilled to order at Soweto shisa nyamas, bunny chow and kotas on the street, Indian and Middle Eastern cooking in Fordsburg, and Portuguese peri-peri. The northern suburbs add fine dining and Cape wines, though reaching them usually means a drive.

Kigali's table is simpler: lunchtime buffets of beans, plantain and isombe, then goat brochettes with cold beer on open-air terraces in the evening. Its real strength is highland coffee, brewed with care in Kiyovu and Kacyiru, and the diplomatic community supports a decent spread of Indian, Ethiopian and Italian kitchens.

Both are young cities with no old town, and both are defined by recent history. Johannesburg tells that story with more depth and range. The Apartheid Museum, Constitution Hill and Vilakazi Street in Soweto make up several days of serious visiting, and the Origins Centre and the Art Deco inner city add more.

In Kigali, the Genocide Memorial in Gisozi is the one essential visit, and it is deeply affecting. The Campaign Against Genocide Museum, Kandt House and the contemporary galleries of Kacyiru and Kimihurura round it out, but the list ends sooner.

Johannesburg goes out harder and later. South African house and amapiano fill Sandton's clubs and the Soweto afternoon sessions that run into the night, with student rooftops in Braamfontein and the bars of Melville's 7th Street in between. The price is planning every ride, because the scenes are spread out and nobody walks between them after dark.

Kigali is more orderly and comes alive mainly at weekends. Evenings begin with brochettes and beer or a rooftop drink above the lit hills. On Fridays and Saturdays the clubs in Kimihurura and Nyarutarama play Afrobeats and Congolese rumba well past midnight, but weeknights are quiet.

The two are evenly matched, but the outdoors feels different in each. Johannesburg sits on open Highveld grassland with a dry, sunny winter. Black eagles nest in the Walter Sisulu Botanical Garden, the Magaliesberg hills an hour away offer ballooning and kloofing, and Pilanesberg's volcanic crater holds lions, elephants and rhino.

Kigali is greener and hillier, and the city itself is part of the outing: you can climb Mount Kigali or follow the boardwalks of the Nyandungu wetland. Akagera works as a long day's safari, and the gorilla volcanoes are its rarer prize, though the long rains turn the trails muddy.

Johannesburg has the longer list of day trips. Pretoria's Union Buildings and Voortrekker Monument are an easy Gautrain ride away, and the Cradle of Humankind's Sterkfontein Caves are about an hour out. Cullinan's diamond mine and Sun City make two more days out.

Kigali's day trips are fewer and heavier. The memorial churches at Nyamata and Ntarama in the Bugesera countryside are the main outing, and the thatched King's Palace at Nyanza is the other. Beyond those, Huye and Lake Kivu need overnight stops.

Johannesburg has more built for children: Gold Reef City's rides around an old gold mine, the zoo, the Sci-Bono Discovery Centre and lion parks where young children can see big animals without a long safari. The drawback is that every outing is a car journey, and the streets do not suit pushchairs.

Kigali is clean, safe and mild, so it is the more relaxed place to be with children. There is no zoo, theme park or science centre, though, and the main sight is not for young children, so days revolve around hotel pools, the wetland park and perhaps Akagera for older children.

Kigali is clearly the easier city to move around. The central districts have good pavements and feel safe on foot. Licensed moto-taxis with numbered vests and spare helmets, along with app-booked cars, make journeys short because traffic is light, though steep valleys separate neighbourhoods.

Johannesburg is built for cars. The Gautrain linking the airport, Sandton, Rosebank and Pretoria is the one simple option. Elsewhere, visitors rely on ride-hailing or a hired car and keep walking to Rosebank, Braamfontein or Melville in daylight.

Johannesburg is the far bigger shopping city. Sandton's malls around Nelson Mandela Square carry the continent's widest spread of luxury brands, Rosebank's Sunday rooftop market gathers crafts from across southern Africa, and Parkhurst has local design studios. Expect to shop mall by mall rather than stroll a high street.

Kigali's appeal is narrower and more personal. You can find agaseke baskets and imigongo panels in the craft cooperatives, and Kimironko market sells kitenge cloth that its tailors will make into clothes within days. Its malls serve residents rather than visitors.

Johannesburg is the better value overall. Meals, Cape wine and comfortable northern-suburb guesthouses cost well under Western European levels, so the extra spending goes on ride-hailing and guided tours of Soweto or the inner city.

Kigali can be very cheap if you live locally: buffet lunches, brochettes, moto-taxis and free entry to the Genocide Memorial. International hotels and private drivers are priced for diplomats, though, and park fees and gorilla permits can take over the budget of anyone who heads beyond the city.

Johannesburg has a real stage culture. The Market Theatre in Newtown, known for its protest plays under apartheid, still stages South African drama. Jazz runs back to Sophiatown and lives on in clubs and the Joy of Jazz festival, and the Philharmonic and the big northern theatres add musicals and ballet.

Kigali's standout is intore dance, with leaping warriors in grass headdresses performing to drums. Otherwise, performance depends on festivals, arena concerts or the odd open-mic night, so you would need to time a visit to find something on.

Neither city has a bathing tradition, and they are broadly level for rest. The difference is where you find it. In Johannesburg you go looking for it: reasonably priced day spas in the northern suburbs, or a retreat in the Magaliesberg or a bush lodge away from the city's business pace. In Kigali the calm comes from the city itself, with quiet clean streets, garden hotels, yoga in Kiyovu and coffee on a terrace above green hills.