The Background Of The Relationship Between Mdantsane And Duncan Village

Our magazine writes primarily about the township Mdantsane. 

We are not publishing breaking news, meaning that if a police car is set alight and burns out in Mdantsane, you will NOT find a story about this incident the next day in our magazine. 

It is possible that at a later stage we might write about it, but if we do, we will write about a person who was involved in the incident. We will write about the how and why and what impact did the incident have on the person's life.

We write about the people who live and have lived in the township. Dead or alive. We write about their incredible and sometimes so astonishing lives and homes. We are stories tellers of the old school, who concentrate on the now, by reaching back into the past, in an endeavour to understand the context of what we are seeing with our eyes and our hearts. 

We are trying to find the essence of the place, that you call Mdantsane. 

We belong may be to a dying breed, a species that has come close to extinction, because we love stories about the small things, like the soup that your mother always cooked for you and its recipe that you learned from her and that you have never shared with anyone.

In our continuous attempt to understand more about the background and the history of Mdantsane, we are looking today at the "old relationship between Mdantsane and Duncan Village".

 

Duncan Village, the "old and first location of East London" in the late 1940's - image Amathole Museum King Williams Town

Duncan Village was established in 1941 and was named after the then Governor of East London Patrick Duncan - image Amathole Museum King Williams Town

It is indeed a very old relationship if 75 years count for something. Duncan village is still today referred to as the "old location of East London" and it is the place from where the first residents were resettled forcefully to live in Mdantsane in NU 1.

Duncan Village was there before Mdantsane. 

Yeah, that is true. Duncan Village was established in 1941. And if this is so, you might ask why in gods name was the place called Duncan Village. Well, because the governors, politicians and statesmen of this turbulent time had a relatively good self confidence and loved to donate their name to the places they "created" under their rule and governance.

Overcrowding in Duncan Village  in the 1940's and a lack of the most basic facilities- image Amathole Museum King Williams Town

In 1941, the then acting Governor General Sir Patrick Duncan oversaw the opening of what was called a "leasehold tenure area" in the East Bank Location to which he gave his name. After a while, the whole East Bank Location became known as Duncan Village 

The streets of  Duncan Village in the late 1940's - image Amathole Museum King Williams Town

Hard to maintain reasonable standards of hygiene - image Amathole Museum King Williams Town

 

Only 16 years later, in 1957 the first preliminary plans for Mdantsane were made by the East London municipality. The reason for this was, that the old location of Duncan Village was becoming too crowded. The administration of East London had come under pressure and according to municipal records, they were looking for "a magnet to draw away blacks from East London not for work but for dwelling places" [municipal records, Gordon,1980:6]. 

The administration of East :London was looking for "a magnet" to draw people away from Duncan Village to combat overcrowding - image Amathole Museum King Williams Town

We explained in our article "Where does the name Mdantsane come from?" that the word Mdantsane was derived from Umdanzani. In 1958 land from the white farm called Umdanzani, located near the railway line, was released for the purpose of creating a "dormatory township". 

At the end of 1962 a request was made for the first 300 dwellings of Unit 1 to be built close to the site of a new textile factory.and by the end of 1963 the first residents moved in [Gordon, 1980:10].

The whole East Bank area became to be known as Duncan Village - image Amathole Museum King Williams Town

The first inhabitants of Mdantsane came from Duncan Village and were relocated to NU 1 were 300 houses had been built. Mdantsane was born.  Image Amathole Museum King Williams Town

There is a strong relationship between the two townships Mdantsane and Duncan Village today. There is a bond, and there is competition between them. There are family connections that have lived through the years and it is no wonder because Duncan Village is the seed from which Mdantsane was created from. 

You will often hear expressions like: ah my mother lives in Duncan Village, my grandparents are still there, I have a cousin in Duncan Village, I visit my aunt every Saturday in Duncan Village.

Growing up in Duncan Village - an unknown child - image Amathole Museum King Williams Town

Mdantsane came to house the labor needs of East London and its border industries. East London was one of the first to become a border industry area, based on the fact that it was situated in close proximity to both the Transkei and Ciskei.
The concept of a border industry came out of the report of the Tomlinson Commission in 1955 and such an industry was described as "one which is situated within a white area, but close to a homeland -preferably within walking or cycling distance" [Daniel & Waxmonsky, 1980:49]

The location Duncan Village, was called a squatter camp - image Amathole Museum King Williams Town

Today looking at both townships, Duncan Village is considered the poorer and more destitute one. Urban development and urban renewal programs have somehow overlooked the old location Duncan Village. But the strong ties between the two have been uncut.

All images have been sourced from the Amathole Museum in King Williams Town in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. We thank the Museum for allowing us to show these images here.

Where Does The Name Mdantsane Come From ?

What does the name Mdantsane mean ? Where does it come from? 

Nobody knows. It does not mean anything. Really, we don't know. It's just a name.

We have heard that more than once. 

But it was rather hard to believe for us! In Africa every name has a meaning! Every name comes from somewhere. In Africa behind every name there is a story. In Africa every name has significance and stands for an event, a place, a great happening or a story. Like the guy, named ambulance, whom we met and who in works in an upholstery in town. His mother gave birth in an ambulance. That is logic, that is real! That's a great story!

So we asked again and again most of the time receiving the same answers - until we came, across a  document about the history of East London and Mdantsane, that satisfied our curiosity!

MDANTSANE = UMDANZANI

Mdantsane is said to have received its name from the farm Umdanzani on whose ground it was established

By the 1940s, living quarters for black East London workers were hard to find and the existing locations and the already big township Duncan Village were overcrowded. Duncan Village is a township, that existed long before Mdantsane.
More Residential areas for black labor were needed and lengthy discussions took place on the level of the town council concerning the most suitable location for another "Bantu Residential Area". More information can be found in our article The Origin of Mdantsane.

In 1954 the City Engineer was requested to find space for expansion, especially on suitable land adjoining Duncan Village.

But the survey was refused by the national government and the area was declared to be for white people only. 

Areas near Newlands, Macleantown, Kwelegha and a farm with the name “Umdanzani”, were examined. 

The latter was found to be suitable as it lay alongside the national road and railway line, and in 1958 the new site was declared.

The municipality undertook the planning which was based on the "neighbourhood concept" of a garden city, first suggested by E. Howard in 1898. This envisaged a central CBD (Central Business District) with neighbourhoods clustering around it. 

In each neighbourhood there would be low order central areas, which would house shops, churches and educational facilities. 

The nature of the topography, ridges and valleys, dictated much of the layout, which tried to avoid the formal grid pattern and worked around curves, loops and triangles. 

By the end of 1963 the first 300 residents occupied the new houses.
In 1966 it was proclaimed a "Ciskei homeland" town and excised from East London. The advantage at least was that this did allow for freehold title. It was originally only intended to make provision for 120 000, but it grew very rapidly and today it is divided into eighteen zones which are still expanding, with the newest unit known as Unit P.

The original Name Umdanzani transformed over time to Mdantsane.

The Origin Of Mdantsane

The Establishment of Mdantsane As A Bantu Residential Area in 1962

MDANTSANE TODAY. The idea was born in 1962

We have done quite some research on the origin and establishment of Mdantsane. The History of Mdantsane is a topic that interests us a lot and we would like to enable our readers to take a look back into the past and understand the origin of Mdantsane as a residential area that has developed into the second biggest township in South Africa.

What we know is that Mdantsane was established in 1962 as a so called Bantu Residential Area. But fact is there is very little documentation about the development of this area in 1962 or earlier.

We have been searching for quite a while for old documents, photos, maps and other useful information but always with the same outcome. NADA! This was also a our reason for the establishment of this online magazine The Mdantsane Way.

We paid a visit to the East London Museum the other day and had planned to spent a whole day there searching their archives. What was handed over to us was one folder approximately 10 cm thick. Not much here either!

But our visit was not in vain. The folder contained three documents, consisting of notes from the proceedings of a meeting with the deputy-minister of Bantu Administration and Development regarding the proposed development of Mdantsane as a Bantu Residential area dating back to the 13th of March 1962.

In 1962 the idea of Mdantsane was born. The notes give us a very good idea of the complex and complicated discussion that had taken place at the time.    

Townships were established in strategic positions to bigger cities with the purpose in mind to serve as a labour pool for so called Industrial Development Sites. People were removed from other locations to live there and commute to the cities for work.

We are publishing here with the East London Museum's permission extracts of a meeting that took place 52 years ago and that determined the future of Mdantsane at the time. We think that you might find this as interesting and enlightening as we did. 

The participants in the meeting were as follows:

MDANTSANE DEVELOPED INTO SECOND BIGGEST TOWNSHIP IN SOUTH AFRICA, BORN IN 1962