Durban

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Durban sits on the Natal Bay of the Indian Ocean, and its name in isiZulu - eThekwini - simply means "bay" or "lagoon." On Christmas Day in 1497, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama sailed parallel to this coastline and named it Natal, the Portuguese word for Christmas, while searching for a sea route from Europe to India. That single act of naming set in motion centuries of layered history: Zulu kingdoms and Dutch wrecks, indentured labourers from British India, apartheid-era sieges and post-apartheid reinventions. Today Durban is the third-most populous city in South Africa, the busiest port in sub-Saharan Africa, and the first UNESCO City of Literature on the African continent. How did a trading post granted by a Zulu king to six British settlers in 1824 become all of that? The answers begin long before da Gama arrived.

• 2. Before the Settlers

  ›

  Archaeological evidence from the Drakensberg mountains places human habitation in the Durban area as far back as 100,000 BP, among communities of hunter-gatherers. These people occupied the land of what is now KwaZulu-Natal until the gradual arrival of agro-pastoralists and pastoralists from the north incorporated them into broader communities. The Zulu nation passed their history of the region down through generations of oral tradition, a record that carries weight even where written documentation is absent.

  The first written encounter with the area from an outsider came from a shipwreck, not a planned expedition. In 1686, a vessel belonging to the Dutch East India Company named the Stavenisse was wrecked off the eastern coast of South Africa. Survivors made their way to the Bay of Natal, where they were taken in by the Abambo people - known also as the Hlubi - led at the time by Chief Langalibalele. The shipwrecked crew learned the tribe's language and observed their customs. They reported that the locals called their land Embo and described its people as hospitable.

  The Dutch were paying attention. On the 28th of October 1689, the galiot Noord set out from Table Bay to retrieve those survivors and negotiate a purchase. The Noord arrived on the 9th of December 1689, and the Dutch Cape Colony paid £1,650 to the Abambo people for the Bay of Natal. Laurens van Swaanswyk drew up a formal contract; the chief of the Abambo signed it, with the Stavenisse crew acting as translators. That transaction was the first formal European claim on the bay that would later become Durban.

• 3. The British Foothold

  ›

  James Saunders King and Francis George Farewell were both former Royal Navy officers who had served in the Napoleonic Wars. By 1822 they were working the trade routes between the Cape and Delagoa Bay. On a return journey in 1823 a severe storm forced them to risk the sandbar at the mouth of the Bay of Natal; they crossed safely and found shelter. King mapped the Bay and named two features "the Salisbury and Farewell Islands."

  In 1824, Farewell, backed by a trading company called J. R. Thompson & Co., set out to open formal trade with Shaka, the Zulu king. Henry Francis Fynn, a trader from Delagoa Bay, joined the venture. Fynn sailed on the brig Julia; Farewell followed six weeks later on the Antelope. Between the two vessels they brought 26 potential settlers, though only 18 stayed.

  Fynn secured a decisive alliance when he helped nurse Shaka through injuries from an assassination attempt by one of his half-brothers. In gratitude, Shaka issued a document dated the 7th of August 1824, granting to "F. G. Farewell and Company entire and full possession in perpetuity" of a tract that included the port of Natal, land extending 10 miles south of the Bay, 25 miles north, and 100 miles inland. Farewell raised the Union Jack and fired a Royal Salute of four cannon shots and twenty musket shots. By the time the celebration was over, only six of the original eighteen settlers had decided to stay - and those six are counted as the founders of what became Port Natal as a British colony. They were joined by King and Nathaniel Isaacs in 1825.

  On the 23rd of June 1835, a meeting of 35 European residents in Fynn's territory decided to build a capital town and name it D'Urban, after Sir Benjamin D'Urban, then governor of the Cape Colony. The modern name stuck.

• 4. Siege, Annexation and Growth

  ›

  By 1839 the Voortrekkers - Dutch-speaking settlers moving inland from the Cape - had established the Natalia Republic, with Pietermaritzburg as its capital. Tensions between the Voortrekkers and the Zulu, and British anxiety about losing access to Port Natal, led Governor George Thomas Napier to dispatch a military force under Captain Thomas Charlton Smith. Smith's force arrived on the 4th of May 1842 and built a fortified camp that would later be remembered as The Old Fort.

  On the night of the 23rd of May 1842, Smith's troops attacked a Voortrekker camp at Congella, and failed. Forced back, the British garrison found itself besieged inside its own camp. A local English trader named Dick King slipped through the siege lines with his servant Ndongeni and rode to Grahamstown in 14 days to bring back reinforcements. The relief force arrived 20 days after King's departure; the Voortrekkers retreated and the siege ended.

  On the 4th of May 1843, Britain formally annexed the Natalia Republic, with Natal itself annexed eight days later. Durban became a borough in 1854, and that same year the council commissioned a seal for official documents - produced in 1855 and replaced in 1882. The replacement seal combined the coats of arms of Sir Benjamin D'Urban and Sir Benjamin Pine, but an application to register it with the College of Arms in 1906 was rejected on the grounds that the design implied D'Urban and Pine were husband and wife. The motto on the arms read in Latin: "Better fortune follows a humble beginning." Durban was granted full city status in 1935, the same year the Playhouse Theatre opened in Tudor Revival style on what is now Anton Lembede Street.

• 5. A City Shaped by Indentured Labour

  ›

  From 1860 onward, indentured labourers from British India arrived in Durban to work the sugar plantations of Natal Colony. Passenger Indians followed later. Their presence transformed the city's cultural landscape in ways still visible today: in cuisine, in religious architecture, in language, and in the media landscape.

  Durban now has a large population of Indian descent. The SABC operates Radio Lotus from Durban, aimed specifically at South Africans of Indian origin. The newspaper Post, published by Independent Newspapers, targets the Indian community. The Warwick Junction Precinct, in the heart of the city, hosts informal markets where vendors sell goods ranging from traditional medicine to spices and clothing - a direct descendant of the layered trading culture that Indian settlement helped build.

  Sugar production remains one of the region's primary industries. South Africa produces 19.9 million tons of sugar cane per year, and most of it comes from KwaZulu-Natal, the province Durban anchors. The port that shipped those first agricultural exports is now the busiest in South Africa and the fourth-busiest in the entire Southern Hemisphere - a measure of how thoroughly the colonial economy scaled into global commerce.

• 6. Post-Apartheid Durban

  ›

  With the end of apartheid, Durban restructured its local government, and its first post-apartheid mayor was Sipho Ngwenya. In July 1996, the city became part of the Durban UniCity; Obed Mlaba was appointed its mayor that same month. By 1999, under South Africa's new municipal governance system, the city became the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, with Mlaba elected mayor again and re-elected in 2006. Subsequent mayors included James Nxumalo, elected after the May 2011 local elections, and Zandile Gumede, who served from the 23rd of August 2016 until the 13th of August 2019.

  Population change followed the political shift. Black Africans, previously restricted from living freely in the city, moved in during the 1990s. Between 1996 and 2001, the city's population grew at an annual average of 2.34%. Shanty towns formed around the urban edge and were often demolished. Growth slowed between 2001 and 2011 to 1.08% per year as the government built low-income housing. By 2011, the population within the city limits had reached 595,061 - up from 536,644 in 2001. The share of black Africans in the city rose from 34.9% in 2001 to 51.1% by 2011, while the share of white residents dropped from 25.5% to 15.3% over the same period.

  Late in the 2000s, 107 streets in Durban were renamed - typically to honour figures from the anti-apartheid and international revolutionary movements. The process happened in two stages: an initial group of 18 renamed streets was met with some opposition from rival parties; a second batch of 99 streets drew considerably wider resistance. Opposition came from the Democratic Alliance, the Inkatha Freedom Party, the Minority Front, and segments of the general public including middle-class white, Indian, and Zulu nationalist residents who argued the names lacked local connection. The ANC characterised the project as part of a necessary social transformation.

• 7. Sport, Culture, and Climate Risk

  ›

  Durban was one of the host cities of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, for which the Moses Mabhida Stadium was built. The city hosted six matches in that tournament, including a semi-final. A year later, in July 2011, Durban hosted the 123rd IOC Session. The city had also been awarded the 2022 Commonwealth Games, but withdrew in March 2017 when the South African government pulled its financial subsidy; Birmingham, England, stepped in as replacement host.

  The Sharks rugby union team, whose 54,000-capacity home ground Kings Park Stadium is sometimes called the Shark Tank, competes in both the United Rugby Championship and the Heineken Champions Cup. Kingsmead Cricket Ground has hosted test matches as well as nine matches at the inaugural 2007 ICC World Twenty20, including a semi-final. On the cultural side, the African Art Centre - founded in 1960 and described as the longest-surviving organisation involved in promoting African artists and crafters - moved in 2017 to a new home in Station Drive. The Playhouse Theatre Company, based in the restored Tudor Revival building, runs educational programs and has staged the work of playwrights including Mbongeni Ngema.

  Durban is also UNESCO's first City of Literature in Africa, a designation that sits alongside a very different kind of forecast. A 2019 paper published in PLOS One projected that under a moderate climate scenario, Durban's climate by 2050 would most closely resemble the current climate of Kigali, with an annual temperature increase of 1.7 degrees. The 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report identified Durban as one of 12 major African cities facing severe exposure to future sea level rise; those 12 cities together could sustain cumulative damages of US$65 billion under the moderate scenario and US$86.5 billion under the high-emission scenario by 2050. The city that ships most of sub-Saharan Africa's cargo through a natural harbour on the Indian Ocean is itself one of the coastlines most at risk from the ocean's rising.