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Pietermaritzburg

Capital city of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

  • 15 min read
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This media shows a South African Protected Site with SAHRA file reference 0000000000 .
Janek Szymanowski · CC BY-SA 3.0

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The city is named uMgungundlovu in Zulu, after King Dingane's royal homestead. Pietermaritzburg is popularly called Maritzburg and is often informally abbreviated to PMB. It is a regionally important industrial hub, producing aluminium, timber and dairy products, and is the main economic hub of uMgungundlovu District Municipality. The public sector is a major employer in the city due to local, district and provincial government offices located here.

The city has many schools and tertiary education institutions, including a campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

History

The city was occupied by Voortrekkers, in April 1838 following the murder of Piet Retief and his seventy-strong party at the Zulu Capital, Mgungundlovu (6 February 1838), when seeking land to settle around Port Natal (The Natal-Land Treaty), and from where the reprisal Wenkommando departed (November 1838) to defeat Dingane at the Battle of Blood River (16 December 1838). Pietermaritzburg is approximately 160 km (100 mi) direct from the Zulu capital, Mgungundlovu.

Prior to the battle (9 December 1838) a vow was taken that if the Boers were granted victory over the Zulu, then a sacred church would be built which still stands today, The Church of the Vow. It was Jan Gerritze Bantjes, Secretary General to Andries Pretorius, Commander of the campaign who arranged the financing of the church by the Boer towns folk which by then had taken a low priority after the war.

The town grew rapidly to become the capital of the short-lived Boer republic of Natalia. Britain took over Pietermaritzburg in 1843 and it became the seat of the Natal Colony's administration with the first lieutenant-governor, Martin West, making it his home. Fort Napier, named after the governor of the Cape Colony, Sir George Thomas Napier, was built to house a garrison. In 1893, Natal received responsibility for its own government, and an assembly building was built along with the city hall.

On 1 June 1893, while the young Mahatma Gandhi was on his way to Pretoria, a white man objected to Gandhi's presence in a first-class carriage. Despite Gandhi having a first-class ticket, he was ordered by the conductor to move to the van compartment at the end of the train: he refused, and he was removed from the train at Pietermaritzburg.

Shivering through the winter night in the waiting room of the station, Gandhi made the momentous decision to stay on in South Africa and fight the racial discrimination against Indians there. Out of that struggle emerged his unique version of nonviolent resistance, Satyagraha. Today, a bronze statue of Gandhi stands in Church Street, in the city center.

In 1910, when the Union of South Africa was formed, Natal became a province of the Union, and Pietermaritzburg became one of the capitals of the country. During apartheid, the city was segregated into various sections. 90% of the Indian population was moved to the suburb of Northdale while most of its Zulu inhabitants were moved to the neighbouring township of Edendale and white inhabitants were moved out of those areas.

Name

There exist two interpretations about the origin of the city's name. One is that it was named after Piet Retief (Pieter Mauritz Retief) and Gerrit Maritz (Gerhardus Marthinus Maritz), two Voortrekker leaders. The other is that it was originally named after Piet Retief's full name alone. In this interpretation the original name was "Pieter Mauritz' Burg", later transliterated to the current name. In 1938, the city announced officially that the second element Maritz should also honour Gert Maritz.

In fact, neither Retief nor Maritz ever reached Pietermaritzburg. Retief was killed by Dingane, successor to Shaka, king of the Zulus. Maritz died of illness on 23 September 1838 near the present-day town of Estcourt, some eighty kilometres northwest of Pietermaritzburg, after the battle with the Zulus at Bloukranz.

At the time of the rise of the Zulu Empire, the site that was to become Pietermaritzburg was called uMgungundlovu. That is popularly translated from the Zulu as "Place of the Elephant" although it could also be translated to mean "The elephant wins".

Umgungundlovu is thus thought to be the site of some Zulu king's victory since "Elephant" (Indlovu) is a name traditionally taken by the Zulu monarch. Legend has it that Shaka had his warriors hunt elephant there to sell the ivory to English traders at Durban (then called Port Natal). Today, the town is still called by its Voortrekker name although the municipality of which it is part bears the Zulu name.

Education

The University of Natal was founded in 1910. In 1922 the university extended to Durban. The two campuses were incorporated into the University of Natal in March 1949. It became a major voice in the struggle against apartheid and was one of the first universities in the country to provide education to African students. It became the University of KwaZulu-Natal on 1 January 2004.

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