The Walmart store at East Point Shopping Centre in Boksburg is selling more per square metre than the Game store it replaced. The centre’s owner, SA Corporate Real Estate, said the Walmart achieved a trading density 28.7% higher than Game’s over its first four months of trading, according to BusinessTech. Trading density is sales per square metre of retail space, and the landlord’s comparison ran from March to 30 June 2026. Massmart’s own announcement put the opening date at 28 February.
## The store and the comparison
Massmart announced that its third South African Walmart would open on Saturday 28 February 2026 at East Point, with trading hours of 8am to 8pm from Monday to Saturday and 9am to 5pm on Sundays and public holidays. The store was to be run by Hector Msane, a 22-year retail veteran, and to create 80 jobs. The Boksburg store sells fresh food, groceries and home entertainment items, and Massmart said it was building on the launches at Clearwater and Fourways. Massmart also said Walmart would donate more than 1.5 tonnes of non-perishable groceries to FoodForward SA for the Ekurhuleni area, and work with local suppliers including the Ekurhuleni-based Ultra Chem.
The Open Letter newsletter, which also reported the result, points out that both retailers traded from the same retail space in the same centre and catchment area, which makes the comparison direct. It also cautions that this is one store over four months, a promising indicator and not proof of wider success. East Point has more than 65 retailers, according to BusinessTech.
## Where the store sits in Walmart’s rollout
East Point is one of three Walmart stores in South Africa, all in former Game premises. Clearwater Mall in Roodepoort opened on 20 November 2025 and Fourways Mall on 28 November 2025, according to MyBroadband. Massmart said customers at the first two had embraced Walmart’s Every Day Low Price philosophy.
Massmart has spoken of another 21 proposed Walmart stores across Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. When MyBroadband asked about 2026 plans in July, the company said it had no further information on upcoming launches but would communicate new developments. BusinessTech reports that no store has opened since East Point.
MyBroadband notes that the Walmart conversions appear to have replaced an earlier Massmart plan to turn Game spaces into small-format Makro stores, a project the company went quiet on after July 2024. The two rollouts are linked. In February, a Game employee said that about 21 Game stores had been earmarked for closure, with some potentially reopening as Walmart, and Massmart’s own announcement that month referred to roughly 20 Game locations that could close and reopen under the Walmart name, according to News24. BusinessTech reports that Game dropped below 100 stores in January 2026 for the first time in more than 15 years, and that closing 21 would leave it with about 78.
André Steyn, Massmart’s vice-president of format acceleration, said independently published total price comparisons had confirmed a low-price advantage for Walmart on a comparable trolley of everyday essentials. Walmart has also extended its 60-minute express delivery radius from 5 km to 8 km, and News24 reports the retailer says 99% of first-time online customers intend to place repeat orders.
## What the landlord is doing next
SA Corporate Real Estate said it is pursuing an upmarket coffee offering, additional children’s entertainment and complementary athleisure brands for East Point. BusinessTech separately reported that the REIT posted comprehensive income of about R587 million for the six months to 30 June 2026, a 144.6% increase on the same period of 2025. That figure is the REIT’s result across its whole portfolio, while the Walmart comparison covers a single store over four months, so the two should not be read as cause and effect.
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