Who lives on Nettleton Road, Africa’s most expensive street

When Solly Soka Madibela, the North West mining mogul known publicly as MySol, threw a multi-day birthday and housewarming party at his new Clifton property earlier this month, complete with champagne towers, cigars, a customised Brabus Rolls-Royce Cullinan worth over R15 million and a lineup that included DJ Tira, Kwesta, Mlindo the Vocalist, Blaq Diamond and Sjava, he was not just celebrating a birthday. He was announcing an arrival on the most expensive street in Africa.

Nettleton Road is a short, steep, cul-de-sac road carved into the cliffside of Lion’s Head in Clifton, Cape Town. Fewer than 30 properties line it. Every home faces west, positioned to absorb Cape Town’s famous Atlantic sunsets, with the Twelve Apostles mountain range above and all four Clifton beaches below. It is the most expensive residential address on the African continent by average transaction price, and it has been for years.

MySol paid reportedly over R220 million for his seven-storey, seven-bedroom villa. He is the newest arrival on a road where the entry price has been rising steeply with each successive transaction.

DJ Black Coffee

Six months before MySol’s housewarming, Grammy Award-winning DJ Nkosinathi Maphumulo, known globally as Black Coffee, acquired the property at 5 Nettleton Road through his company Little Ark Holdings for R157 million in cash. The home, known as The Pentagon, was designed by acclaimed Cape Town architect Stefan Antoni. It spans five en-suite bedrooms, each with a private balcony, accessible via lift, alongside a 16-metre heated infinity pool, a cinema room, a gym, staff quarters and panoramic Atlantic views. The sale set a residential transaction record in South Africa at the time. MySol’s villa sits next door.

Clare Wiese

Clare Wiese, daughter of Shoprite billionaire Christo Wiese, purchased a home on Nettleton Road in 2016 for R90 million, making her one of the road’s longer-standing residents and one of the youngest buyers in its history at the time of acquisition. The Wiese family’s broader property footprint in Cape Town’s Atlantic Seaboard is substantial, and Clare’s Nettleton purchase was widely seen as a generational transfer of the family’s real estate orientation to the premium end of the market.

Stefan Antoni

The architect most responsible for Nettleton Road’s aesthetic lives on the street he helped design. Stefan Antoni, founder of the architecture firm SAOTA, has designed several of the homes on the road and owns one himself. His firm’s signature glass-and-concrete vocabulary, gravity-defying cantilevers and floor-to-ceiling ocean-facing walls, has become the defining architectural language of the address. He is simultaneously the road’s most influential creator and one of its most invested residents.

Hugo Jankowitz

Art dealer Hugo Jankowitz owns 21 Nettleton, a boutique clifftop property that operates as one of the most exclusive small hotels in Africa. With six rooms, a penthouse and the option to book the entire property exclusively, it operates less like a hotel and more like a private villa for rent. Prices start at R15,000 per night and can reach over R130,000 for a full villa booking. Jankowitz occupies a unique position on the street as both a commercial operator and a residential presence, having anchored himself at one of Nettleton Road’s most photographed addresses.

A Durban advertising executive and a Johannesburg computer executive

Several of Nettleton Road’s residents operate with deliberate privacy and are not publicly named. Among the known background figures: a Durban-based advertising executive who sold part of his business to a British multinational and turned down a cash offer of R145 million for two adjacent properties. A Johannesburg computer executive in his thirties, described by agents as private and discreet, acquired a Stefan Antoni-designed mansion through Lance Cohen of Lance Real Estate for R111 million in one of the road’s earlier record transactions.

The land buyers

In early 2025, two adjoining vacant plots totaling just 2,700 square metres sold for R170 million. No house. No finishes. Just the address. The buyers are now building, and when those homes are completed, they are expected to reset the price benchmark again.

The road itself

Nettleton Road did not become what it is overnight. In the 1970s and 1980s, Clifton was desirable but Nettleton was largely undeveloped. Over the past two and a half decades, as Cape Town became a global destination, a succession of record-breaking transactions rebuilt it from the inside out. In 2017, a six-bedroom mansion sold for R120 million, then a national record. That figure now represents something a buyer might pay for a property that is not even in the top tier.

Lance Cohen, CEO of Lance Real Estate, who has brokered multiple Nettleton transactions, has described the road’s draw in plain terms. “The number one draw of Nettleton Road is the incredible view, across the Atlantic Ocean, the Clifton beaches and towards the Twelve Apostles, with Lion’s Head and Table Mountain in your backyard,” he has said. “The views here are better than anywhere else in Cape Town, and that is why people pay such prices. The second factor is the prestige. Owning a property on Nettleton Road means you have reached the top of society.”

Pam Golding Properties cites rarity, privacy, exclusivity and the lifestyle as the four structural pillars of demand. There is no meaningful new supply possible. The cliffside has a finite number of buildable plots and almost all of them have been built on. What that means in practice is that whoever wants to join the road has to wait for one of the existing owners to sell, and the existing owners are in no hurry.

MySol’s arrival, announced through one of the most-watched housewarming parties in recent South African social history, is the latest entry in that succession. He is 44 years old, the founder and CEO of MySol Holdings and Logistics, a mining and logistics group built in the North West. He has made no attempt to be discreet about the purchase or what it means to him. In that respect, he is in the minority on a road where most residents prefer to let the address speak for itself.