Two years ago I attended a three-day conference at the Durban ICC, and stayed at the Hilton Hotel with the local and international delegates. The international visitors were excited to be in KwaZulu-Natal and were keen to make the most of every minute in Durban. I love Durban, and since they looked to me as a South African for suggestions on things to do, I was happy to recommend places to dine, shop, dance and beach. At breakfast, I asked my tourist friends on what they’d been up to the previous evening. They rolled their eyes, shook their heads and had expressions that could only mean that they had dramatic stories to tell. They had decided to take a walk around downtown Durban in the early evening and got lost. I was horrified! They had assumed the area was safe to walk, but soon realised that they were mistaken. I felt a bit embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of warning them about downtown Durban. Thankfully, nothing happened to them, but they were still shaken by the experience. I myself would not take a stroll in the streets that are a couple of hundred metres away from the promenade. Just like the tourists, I haven’t experienced any crime in Durban personally, but the seediness of the area is evident for all to see. And unfortunately, it seems to only have gotten worse since then…
Instead of going on hearsay, we decided to find out for ourselves, by taking an early-morning walk around some of the streets in the city, to see how bad the situation really is. Escorted by municipal authorities and private security, within minutes of our walkabout, we found used syringes in the gutters, human faeces on pavements and homeless people sleeping in a few building entryways. Of the hundreds of homeless people we came across under a particular bridge, we spoke to a few to find out what their daily life entailed. They confessed to us that they camp out at the bridge because it’s central to them accessing drug dealers that operate downtown, and they’re also close to the promenade where they can access and rob unsuspecting tourists to fuel their drug habit. They shared that they wouldn’t move because homeless shelters were filthy and expensive, and the drugs were cheap.
Everything we saw was shockingly within 200 metres of the promenade, just behind the popular south beach hotels, that are always fully booked throughout the year. Basically, what we see in the famous pictures of the Durban south beachfront is a facade. A lie.
Apparently, the levels of petty crime on the promenade used to be at record levels in the 90s and early 2000s, but since the huge investment and massive upgrade of the promenade (that happened just in time for the 2010 FIFA World Cup) the crime levels in the area dropped significantly and soon locals reclaimed the beachfront promenade in their thousands. Now, eight years later, unfortunately the criminality seems to have returned, perhaps not to the pre-2010 levels, but even the city cannot deny it anymore.
So, it is using this logic that the eThekwini municipality launched the R35-billion Durban Point redevelopment earlier this year. The new promenade will be 30 metres wide, and the first phase is expected to be open for use by mid-2019, the municipality said. The R35-billion Point Waterfront Development aims to overhaul the entire area and further attract investment and tourists to the vicinity. The city firmly believes that once the development is complete – which they estimate will be sometime beyond 2022 – the social issues in that area, namely unemployment, homelessness, drug peddling, businesses pulling out of the area and general crime, will at least be reduced.
I understand the logic. I truly do. But the proposed solution will take months to effect meaningful change. And do we know whether the end result will prove to be a long-lasting solution? There seems to be no specific plan to deal with these social ills. It seems that once the redevelopment is done, those issues will hopefully resolve themselves. I can’t help but wonder: what does this mean to those homeless families on the streets tonight? What do we say to those small family enterprises that have had to shut down because they haven’t been able to survive the crime wave? What happens to the tourists that are on their way to Durban as we speak? How does the municipality’s very long-term plan help these people today? Durban is in a crisis right now. This minute. Today. Some people cannot wait till 2022.