Durban —eThekwini in Zulu— is South Africa's great warm city: a subtropical port on the Indian Ocean, with golden sand beaches, palm trees, a mild sea all year round and a relaxed atmosphere that blends Zulu culture, British colonial heritage and the largest community of Indian origin outside India. That mix gives it a character all its own, more Caribbean and spicier than the rest of the country.
Its backbone is the Golden Mile, a long seafront stretch of beaches, promenade, pools and restaurants running from the north down to uShaka Marine World, one of the largest marine parks in the southern hemisphere. Rising above the skyline is the arch of the Moses Mabhida Stadium, built for the 2010 World Cup and now a venue for sport and adrenaline. And a few blocks from the sea beats the Indian heart of the city, with the Victoria Street Market, Hindu temples and a cuisine of curries and bunny chow that is practically a local religion.
Durban is often skipped on classic itineraries —which favour Cape Town and Kruger—, but it's a stop that surprises: sun, surf, unique food and a fascinating cultural mix. It's also the natural gateway to KwaZulu-Natal, with the Drakensberg, the wildlife reserves in the north and the beaches along the coast. Two well-spent days leave a warm memory in every sense.
Durban grew from the natural harbour of the Bay of Natal, where British traders settled in 1824 and named the place D'Urban after the Governor of the Cape. Its history is shaped by the Zulu kingdom, British colonisation and the arrival, from 1860 onwards, of thousands of Indian indentured labourers brought in for the sugar cane plantations —among them, decades later, a young lawyer named Gandhi—. You can read the full story on the Durban history page.
Read the full history ↓The land of the Zulu and of Africa's largest Indian community: the stage for Shaka's kingdom, the Anglo-Zulu wars, Gandhi's arrival and the San rock art of the Drakensberg.
Read the history of Durban and KwaZulu-Natal →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Durban's story begins with a bay. The natural harbour the city grew around, Natal Bay, was sighted, according to tradition, by Vasco da Gama at Christmas 1497, which is where the name 'Natal' ('Christmas' in Portuguese) is said to come from. But long before and long after that sighting, the region was home to Nguni-speaking peoples, and in the early 19th century it came within the sphere of influence of one of the most powerful African states of its time: the Zulu kingdom.
Under Shaka's leadership, between 1816 and 1828, the Zulu kingdom expanded and consolidated through a series of wars and military reforms that transformed the political map of south-eastern Africa, a process sometimes called the Mfecane. The Zulus controlled the interior of present-day KwaZulu-Natal, and their relationship with the newly arrived Europeans, sometimes trade and sometimes conflict, would shape the region's 19th century.
In 1824, a small group of British traders and adventurers led by Francis Farewell and Henry Fynn settled beside the bay to trade ivory, with Shaka's permission. That makeshift settlement, little more than a few huts by the water, was the seed of Durban. In 1835 the settlement was renamed 'D'Urban' in honour of Benjamin D'Urban, governor of the Cape Colony, a name that was later simplified to Durban.
The 19th century was turbulent. Boer Voortrekkers fleeing British rule reached the region and clashed with the Zulu kingdom: in 1838, after a Boer delegation was killed on the orders of King Dingane, the bloody Battle of Blood River was fought. The Boers founded a short-lived republic in Natal, but in 1843 Britain annexed the territory and made it a British colony, with Durban as its main port.
Relations between the British Empire and the Zulu kingdom led in 1879 to the Anglo-Zulu War, one of the best-known colonial conflicts, in which the Zulus dealt the British a humiliating defeat at Isandlwana before they were finally subdued. With the fall of the Zulu kingdom, the region came under colonial control, and Durban established itself as the maritime gateway and trading hub for the interior, exporting goods and, more and more, sugar.
It was sugar that decided Durban's economic and demographic future. The sugar cane plantations stretching along the Natal coast needed plenty of labour, and the colonists couldn't recruit enough Zulu workers on the terms they wanted. The solution they chose would change the face of the city forever.
From 1860, the Colony of Natal began bringing in indentured labourers from British India to work the sugar cane plantations. Over the following decades more than a hundred thousand people arrived on contracts that often amounted to harsh servitude, with the promise of land or a passage home once they finished. Many stayed, and they were joined by free Indian traders (the 'passenger Indians'). That is how Durban's large Indian South African community was born, today the largest concentration of people of Indian origin outside the subcontinent. With it came the temples, the mosques, the spice markets and the curries and bunny chow that define the city's identity.
It was against this background that a young Indian lawyer arrived in Durban in 1893: Mohandas Gandhi. Hired for a legal case, Gandhi experienced the colony's racial discrimination first-hand, most famously when he was thrown off a train at Pietermaritzburg for refusing to leave first class, and that experience transformed him. During the more than twenty years he spent in South Africa, Gandhi developed his philosophy of non-violent resistance, satyagraha, while fighting for the rights of the Indian community. He took those ideas back to India, where he would go on to lead the struggle for independence.
Its Indian heritage made Durban a mixed and one-of-a-kind city, but living together was far from idyllic: the Indian community faced discrimination from the colonial regime and later from apartheid, and there were outbreaks of violence between communities, such as the 1949 riots between Africans and Indians.
Like the rest of South Africa, from 1948 Durban lived under apartheid, a detailed and brutal system of racial segregation. The Group Areas Act reorganised the city by race, forcibly removing entire communities from areas declared 'white'. The most painful case was Cato Manor (Mkhumbane), a lively mixed neighbourhood where Africans and Indians lived side by side. It was razed and its residents were moved to distant townships such as KwaMashu and Umlazi for Africans, or Chatsworth for Indians.
Durban was also a place of resistance. The city and its province played an important part in the struggle against apartheid, from worker mobilisation (the great Durban strikes of 1973 revived the Black trade union movement) to the political activity that kept the opposition alive despite the repression. The KwaMuhle Museum, in a former administration building of the pass system, tells that story of control and resistance today.
The beachfront and the beaches, like everything else in the city, were segregated: there were beaches 'for whites', 'for Indians' and 'for Africans'. The sunny holiday city we know today existed alongside a system of exclusion that marked every metre of sand. That spatial legacy, with distant townships and deep inequality, still shapes Durban's geography.
With the end of apartheid and the arrival of democracy in 1994, Durban, officially part of the eThekwini municipality, entered a new chapter. Today it is one of South Africa's largest cities, the busiest port in the country and in the southern hemisphere, and a tourist destination that draws people with its warm climate, its beaches and its multicultural energy. The revamped Golden Mile, the Moses Mabhida Stadium built for the 2010 World Cup and uShaka Marine World are symbols of a contemporary Durban that is betting on tourism and leisure.
Above all, the city is still a melting pot: Zulu culture, the British colonial legacy and the Indian influence are woven together in its language, food, music and everyday life, giving Durban a character you won't find anywhere else in the country. That mix is its greatest attraction and its greatest wealth.
But Durban also carries the challenges of today's South Africa: inequality, unemployment, the persistence of impoverished townships inherited from apartheid and, in recent years, outbreaks of unrest and devastating floods that hit the city. For travellers, getting to know Durban means enjoying its sun and seafood, but also understanding the history that made it so diverse: the Zulu bay, sugar and the Indian workers, Gandhi, apartheid and the struggle, layers that sit side by side in plain sight for anyone who knows how to look.
