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Back-to-back with the Johannesburg Zoo and smack in the middle of some of the trendiest suburbs is the South African National Museum of Military History. It has a particularly unimposing entrance and driving around it makes it seem unimpressively small. Once inside you’ll realise that this is because, respectively, the curators don’t spend money on anything other than their exhibits, and those exhibits cram an astonishing variety of artefacts into an improbably small footprint.

This isn’t a rah-rah exhibit of South African military prowess, as you could be excused for expecting from an African nation. Even though we’ve built some pretty impressive weapons at various times in our history. Nor is it limited to South African wars and warfare, although numerically the Soviet tanks deployed in Angola outnumber the South American edged weapons. It’s just a great collection of weapons, machines, implements and accessories related to the wholesale slaughter of humans. And a small sideline on patching them up to send them back into battle, spying on them in order to kill them more efficiently and suchlike.

The absolute highlight of the museum is the working tanks you can clamber onto and into, just like the real fighter jet cockpit in which you can sit while making silly sounds involving machine gun fire and rocket explosions. Sadly none of the buttons activates any ordinance, but it’s still as close to Top Gun as you are likely to ever get.

If you have any interest in the Anglo-Boer or Anglo-Zulu wars, then don’t go off to the battlefields before visiting this museum. If you are interested in South Africa’s involvement in and the Second World War (and our near siding with Germany in it), ditto. If you are generally voracious for information, then take a guided tour. But we recommend a leisurely half-day wander about the place with no set mission or objective. Just nose around until you run out of things to see.

Kids love it, naturally, and are well catered for. Some of the tank and airplane exhibits are outdoors, so pick a nice day. Admission is R22, an amount that doesn’t translate into any meaningful fraction of a currency like the euro or dollar. As for finding it, any Jo’burger should be able to direct you easily.

South African National Museum of Military History
Tel: +27 11 646 5513
20 Erlswold Way
Saxonwold