Durban History: The Incredible History Of Durban

Durban History

Durban History: The coastal city of Durban, whose Zulu name is Tekweni, began as the British trading post of Port Natal in 1824. It grew into one of the most important commercial ports, industrial hubs, and vacation spots in southern Africa during the 20th century. The Natal Nguni-speaking people and the Zulu country to the north controlled the area around the city until the second half of the 1800s.

In 1497, Portuguese explorer Vasco De Gama said that the area had a great natural harbor and a high bluff. This prompted European merchants to come to the area to sell skins and ivory to African communities. Subsequently, the population of white people in Durban and its surrounding areas increased. This resulted in the formation of a strongly divided society by race and class in the cities.

Early in Durban’s history, relations on the frontier went up and down between the majority Nguni people, the Boer Voortrekkers, and the English traders. Francis Farewell and Henry Fynn started a new trading settlement in the first half of the 1800s, but African culture dominated it and the growing Zulu country pushed it to the background.

At first, Shaka kaSenzangakhona, the founder of the Zulu state, allowed the white people to live and trade in the area as long as they followed Zulu law. In the early 1820s, African law and customs ruled Port Natal society. This was due to the fact that white settlers had to adapt to the area and the predominantly African population, going so far as to work for Zulu kings as “clients.”

As Shaka strengthened his control over the area through a process known as the mfecane, Nguni chiefdoms that were not under Zulu control broke up. This caused waves of people to flee to Port Natal. The Zulu king saw the growing number of refugees as a possible threat, which made things worse between the settlement and the Zulu state. 

Dingane faced two waves of white expansion after Shaka’s death in 1828: one from Port Natal and another from Boer Trekkers who had recently left the British-controlled Cape and moved into the area. The village grew over the next 20 years with help from Cape colonial and British imperial interference. 

In 1835, British missionary Allen Gardiner helped the Port Natal settlers and the Zulu live together in peace, but it wasn’t easy. He laid the groundwork for a planned, stable city and named it after Sir Benjamin D’Urban, who was governor of the Cape at the time. The Trekkers and traders from Durban formed an alliance against the Zulu, but this quickly turned into a war as the Boers and traders tried to push the Zulu back. 

After defeating the Zulu at the Ncome River in 1838, the Boers demonstrated that they were in charge of the area by establishing the Republic of Natalia. As a result, British troops took over Durban in 1842. Dick King, an early settler, then saved Durban from Boer attacks during the fight of Congella by riding to Grahamstown to get help, an act that has become legendary.

On May 31, 1844, Sir George Napier, the governor of the Cape, annexed Natal after pushing back the Boer forces. The British took this action due to their concerns that the Boer conflict with Africans was intensifying and might extend to the Cape, potentially handing over the strategic port to a foreign power.

White people controlled Durban for the second half of the 1800s as settler capitalism transformed the city and its surrounding area. In 1846, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who was a diplomat for the native tribes, set up a system of separation that meant Africans could only own land in a few small areas. 

Once land suitable for sugar cane cultivation became available, white people flocked to Durban. Building train links to mining hubs in South Africa’s interior led to the growth of Durban’s port and merchant sectors, which in turn required more affordable labor.

Indian immigrants, who later established themselves as market gardeners and traders, and African migrant workers, who found jobs as dockworkers and housekeepers, met these needs. Even though there was a lot of violence in the area during the Anglo-Zulu War in 1879 and the Anglo-Boer War from 1899 to 1902, Durban did very well. 

In fact, these fights only helped local businesses and made white racist attitudes stronger. Because there were more and more white settlers and the economy was growing, Britain gave Natal and its main city a responsible government in 1893. After the turn of the century, Durban became more organized and divided into racial groups. 

Local governments established the notorious Durban System as a way to control the production and sale of beer to African workers. Racism-based governance was detrimental to Africans residing in urban areas. The monopoly’s money paid for tighter control over Africans’ lives in small barracks.

Still, there were a lot of Africans and Indians living in the city, and John Dube, A. W. G. Champion, and Mohandas Gandhi were among the most famous opposition leaders in South Africa. Before the Natives Law Amendment Act of 1937 went into effect, African society took advantage of a short window of time in the law in the 1920s and early 1930s to buy land on the edges of the city. 

Africans set up unofficial townships there, which grew into important communities like the Chateau and Good Hope farms. However, by the end of the 1920s, race tensions and oppression had made Africans more determined to fight against the white state in the area. Africans went on a series of strikes in response to low pay, miserable working conditions, and unfair pass laws. Following a pass-burning protest in 1930, the dockworkers’ municipal beer hall boycott in 1929 marked the end of the strikes.

White officials brutally suppressed both groups. In the late 1930s, the Durban government tightened control over Africans in the city. They made the municipality a whites-only place and sent Africans to planned towns like KwaMashu, Umlazi, and Chesterville. As a result, the city government completely separated African people from everyone else and made them invisible outside of work.

During the apartheid years (1948–1991), problems between African workers got worse as the city’s business and population grew quickly. In 1950, 162,000 people lived there, with over half being African. By 1970, there were 395,000, and today there are more than 2.5 million. In the 1940s, an increase in migration to cities and factories exacerbated tensions between white people and Africans, as well as between Africans and the small Indian population.

In 1949, poor Africans couldn’t find a way to fight back against white society, so they attacked Indian traders they thought were taking advantage of them, which led to riots in the city. During the height of the Apartheid era, this was a turning point for Durban society, as each racial group tried to see itself in contrast to the others. In the 1970s, the city was the center of interest across the country as large-scale strikes led up to the “Durban Moment.” This was the time when South Africa’s opposition groups sped up political change. 

Forcing casual African communities, like Cato Manor, to leave the city and “consolidate” in nearby parts of the KwaZulu homeland was what brought people together to fight apartheid. By 1984 and 1985, the white minority government was facing increasing opposition. African strikes got worse, and in Durban’s King’s Park rugby field, workers formed the Congress of South African Trade Unions. After that, Durban was often at the forefront of the fight against racism.

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