Durban Tour

Moses Mabhida Stadium built for the 2010 FIFA Wolrd Cup

King Shaka memorial and ceremonial rock in foreground

Traditional Zulu house - while not necessarily built of plants anymore, many houses have this shape

Picture of Luthuli and Robert Kennedy

Weaver bird nests

Carol finally finds a restaurant that serves vegetables!

Bust of Ghandi aat his former home

Picture of Mandela casting fist ballot in elections after his release

Durban Tour

September 17, 2016

On Saturday we, and the crew of No Regrets, took a one day tour with Greg Garson, who will be guiding us on our six day Zululand tour next week. While it was billed as a tour of Durban, we didn't actually spend much time in the city of Durban itself.

We headed out in the rain around 8:30am and drove north along the coast to the town of Stanger, now know by its Zulu name, KwaDakuzi. It was where Shaka, the great king of the Zulus, was buried. We visited the grave monument, as well as a small museum and learned a lot about this king who, in the early eighteen hundreds took a small tribe of 1,500 and created the largest and most feared tribe in South Africa. The Zulus remain the largest tribe in the country at around eight million people. Greg knows a lot about the Zulus and gave us a lot of history on the drive.

We next headed off to visit the former home of Chief Albert Luthuli, an anti-apartheid activist who, like Ghandi, advocated non-violence. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960, although had to wait until 1961 to receive it as the South African apartheid government would not give him permission to leave the country. After considerable pressure applied by Europeans and North Americans he was finally given a ten day visa to go to Stockholm. Subsequently he was confined to house arrest and allowed one visitor at a time. Robert Kennedy paid him a visit, ostensibly at the  request of President John Kennedy, although the dates of the visit are somewhat confusing. While here, we saw many weaver birds. The males build round nests at the end of slim tree branches. The females inspect them and if not suitable destroy them and the male must start all over again!

After lunch we visited the house that Ghandi lived in for the many years he lived and worked in Durbar. He came to Durban as an upper class lawyer to help the plight of the Indian indentured workers in South Africa. However  as he was treated as a lower class citizen. This taste of discrimination was instrumental in his forming his views of peace and equality that he would subsequently take back to India. Again, this house had been converted to a museum with a wealth of information about Ghandi and his life.

We ended up at the polling place where Nelson Mandela cast the first vote in the first free elections after his release from prison. Once more, it contained a lot of information on Mandela and his life.

We were to have experienced some Zulu dancing at the end of the day, however by the time we had spent the day in the rain we all decided to postpone this part of the tour until our return from our larger tour next week. All in all it was a very informative day.