EThekwini

eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality is the Metropolitan Municipality created in 2000 that includes the city of Durban, South Africa and surrounding towns. eThekwini is one of the 11 Districts of South Africa of KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. The majority of its 3,090,126 people speak Zulu.

Contents

1 Meaning of the Name eThekwini
2 Geography

2.1 Neighbours

3 Demographics

3.1 Gender
3.2 Ethnic group
3.3 Age

4 External links

Meaning of the Name eThekwini
There is much debate over the meaning of eThekwini, and neither the eThekwini Heritage Department nor the eThekwini Metropolitan Unicity Municipality will state as an absolute fact the derivation of the name.

Some have suggested that the name is based on a joke made by a jester or amaThuli Chief Shadwa who, when the amaThuli settled in the bay are, looked down from today’s Berea area and said that the bay looked like a testicle. Certainly, as Adrian Koopman points out in “Zulu Names”, Elizabeth Pooley’s “Complete Field Guide to Trees of Natal, Zululand and the Transkei” has the Tonga-Kerrie recorded with the Zulu name umthekwini, referring to the single round fruit at the end of each stem. Hence the term “itheku” is or was once used for a one-testicled animal or person, instead of today’s “ithweka”. Since the word “itheku” is not used today in its original sense many might have been led to believe that Shadwa’s joke is in fact a myth.

Janie Malherbe claims that in his pioneering Zulu-English dictionary Bishop Colenso referred to the root word iTeku to mean “open mouth or a bay”. However, she clearly did not read the dictionary, which unblushingly gives other explicit meanings and definitions.

Commandant Sighurt Bourquin, a well-known authority on the Zulu, pointed out that the shape of the harbour would not be readily apparent when it was covered with mangroves viewed obliquely through the trees.

Ethekwini is probably the locative form of itheku or bay, lagoon. There is however a suggestion that it is derived from the Xhosa iteko, meaning a meeting place, and was brought to the area by British Settlers in 1824, many of whom had learnt Xhosa whilst in the Cape.

Geography
Neighbours
eThekwini is surrounded by:
– iLembe District Municipality (DC29) to the north
– the Indian Ocean to the east
– Ugu District Municipality (DC21) to south
– Umgungundlovu District Municipality (DC22) to the west

Demographics
The following statistics are from the 2001 census.

Language

Language       Population         %
Zulu                1 948 061          63.04%
English            925 671            29.96%
Xhosa             106 110             3.43%
Afrikaans        44 438               1.44%

Other languages of South Africa:

28 866       0.93%      Sotho
21 587       0.70%      Ndebele
6 041         0.20%      Northern Sotho
3 266         0.11%      Swati
2 433         0.08%      Tswana
1 807         0.06%      Tsonga
1 356         0.04%      Venda
484            0.02%

Gender

Gender          Population       %
Female          1 605 080        51.94%
Male              1 485 046        48.06%

Ethnic group

Ethnic group        Population         %
Black African       2 110 594          68.30%
Indian/Asian        614 829             19.90%
White                   277 429             8.98%
Coloured              87 274               2.82%

Age

Age                  Population           %
000 – 004         273 097              8.84%
005 – 009         286 606              9.27%
010 – 014         294 820              9.54%
015 – 019         323 345             10.46%
020 – 024         331 475             10.73%
025 – 029         316 326             10.24%
030 – 034         256 429              8.30%
035 – 039         236 009              7.64%
040 – 044         195 032              6.31%
045 – 049         154 640              5.00%
050 – 054         129 097              4.18%
055 – 059         91 991                2.98%
060 – 064         72 334                2.34%
065 – 069         50 020                1.62%
070 – 074         37 078                1.20%
075 – 079         21 847                0.71%
080 – 084         12 877                0.42%
085 – 089          4 678                 0.15%
090 – 094          1 717                 0.06%
095 – 099          560                    0.02%
100 plus            148                     0.00%

External links
Municipal Demarcation Board
Stats SA Census 2001 page
Independent Electoral Commission 2004 election results
eThekwini Online – The official site of Durban, South Africa
Abahlali baseMjondolo website

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