History

A Euro-Centric History of Durban's Founding:

The province of KwaZulu-Natal is the ancestral homeland of the Nguni people, of which the Zulu are the most dominant culture--KwaZulu literally means, "place of the Zulu." It was these people who inhabited the land around Durban Bay when Europeans first arrived at the end of the fifteenth century. Vasco De Gama and his crew are thought to have been the first Europeans to visit the site at which Durban is now located. It is said that De Gama's ship, en route to India, stopped over at Durban on Christmas Day in 1497 and that they named the place Natal to commemorate the occasion. After this visit, however, there were no significant attempts at exploration or settlement made by European colonialists for a century-and-a-half until the Dutch arrived in South Africa in 1692.

Although the Dutch were primarily concerned with the development of Cape Town as a half-way stop for ships of the Dutch East India Company, they laid claim to the entire coast. However, it wasn't until 1824, after the Dutch had lost control over the Cape Colony to the British, that any real attempt at development was made. It was in that year that thirty European settlers arrived at the site that was to become Durban at the behest of a Royal Navy report that determined the bay to be the best location to establish a port of trade with the Nguni people. The party of settlers was granted the land that they settled on by the Zulu king Shaka, who had united all of the Nguni tribes under his leadership in the years prior to the settlers' arrival. Although most of the original settlers died in the first few years following the initial settlement, the place grew gradually and in 1835 it was decided that the settlement would be named D'Urban after Sir Benjamin D'Urban who was the Governor of the Cape Colony.

In 1838, Shaka's successor, Dingane gave a large piece of land in the region that is now known as KwaZulu-Natal to a group of Boer settlers who came up from the Cape to escape British rule. This piece of land included the settlement of D'Urban, which the Boers considered to be part of the newly founded Republic of Natalia. However, tensions between the British and the Boers were not confined to the Cape Colony and just five years later in 1843 Durban would be witness to the Battle of Congella. The dispute originated when the British sent a small force of soldiers to Durban to keep the peace between the Boers and the Zulu. The Boers resisted this effort and instead engaged the peace-keeping force, defeating them and besieging them in their camp. Not soon after the siege was begun, Dick King undertook an epic ride of over a thousand kilometers in less than ten days to call for reinforcements. The siege lasted for over a month before it was lifted by British reinforcements. Soon after, the British annexed the Republic of Natalia, drove the Boers out, and renamed the region the Colony of Natal.