The eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality () is a

metropolitan municipality A metropolitan municipality is a municipality established to serve a metropolitan area. Canada In generic terms and in practical application within Canada, a metropolitan municipality is an urban local government with partial or complete consol ...

, created in 2000, that includes the city of

Durban Durban ( ; , from meaning "bay, lagoon") is the third-most populous city in South Africa, after Johannesburg and Cape Town, and the largest city in the Provinces of South Africa, province of KwaZulu-Natal. Situated on the east coast of South ...

and surrounding towns. eThekwini is one of the 11 districts of the

KwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN) is a Provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the government merged the Zulu people, Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu language, Zulu) and ...

province of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. As of 2011, the majority of its 3,442,361 inhabitants spoke isiZulu.

Etymology

In an 1859 Zulu grammar book, Bishop Colenso asserted that the root word ' means "bay of the sea", from the name ''Mtheku'', used by the Thabethe tribes clan, who were the leaders of the Nguni people. Furthermore the original local inhabitants noted that the locative form, ', was used as a proper name for

. An 1895 English-Zulu dictionary translates the base word ' as "bay", "creek", "gulf" or "sinus", while a 1905 Zulu-English dictionary notes that ' is used for

Geography

eThekwini is surrounded by: * iLembe (DC29) to the north * the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...

to the east * Ugu (DC21) to the south * Umgungundlovu (DC22) to the west

Main places

The 2001 census divided the municipality into the following main places:

Demographics

The following statistics are from the 2011 census.

Gender

As of 2011.

Ethnic group

As of 2022

Age

Politics

The municipal council consists of 222 members elected by

mixed-member proportional representation Mixed-member proportional representation (MMP or MMPR) is a type of representation provided by some mixed electoral system, mixed electoral systems which combine local Winner-take-all system, winner-take-all elections with a Compensation (el ...

. 111 councillors are elected by

first-past-the-post voting First-past-the-post (FPTP)—also called choose-one, first-preference plurality (FPP), or simply plurality—is a single-winner voting rule. Voters mark one candidate as their favorite, or first-preference, and the candidate with more first- ...

in 111 wards, while the remaining 111 are chosen from party lists so that the total number of party representatives is proportional to the number of votes received.

Election results

In the 2021 local government elections, the

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party in South Africa. It originated as a liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid and has governed the country since 1994, when the 1994 South African general election, fir ...

lost their majority on the city council for the first time since the metro's establishment in 2000. The following table shows the detailed results of the election.

References

External links

eThekwini Online
The official site of Durban, South Africa {{Authority control Durban Metropolitan Municipalities of South Africa Municipalities of KwaZulu-Natal