REACT Cities
About Durban
Durban City, including the eThekwini Municipality, is set on a bay where the ‘earth and ocean meet’. As South Africa’s largest city in KwaZulu-Natal, it sprawls along the subtropical east coast of the Indian Ocean, with a metro population of approximately 3.4 to 3.8 million. About two-thirds of the vibrant Durban population are isiZulu-speaking Africans, with the remainder, although diverse, mostly speaking English. Developed around South Africa’s busiest port, the city blends a bustling central business district with colonial and Art Deco architecture, and street vendors integral to the Golden Mile beachfront.
Beyond the city centre, yet as much a part of its heart, lie the suburbs, informal settlements and peri-urban townships, a geographical layout that still attests to apartheid spatial segregation. Well known for its long sandy beaches, warm climate, and blend of Zulu, Indian, and British colonial influences, it is a major manufacturing and domestic tourism hub. From resistance to colonialism, apartheid, and unjust educational and social systems, Durban youth have been central to movements for social change and justice. Yet their participation is shaped by different but persistent and intersecting inequities and marginalisation.
Youth unemployment rose from 36.9% in 2015 to 46.1% in 2025, with 15 to 24-year-olds facing 62.4% unemployment in 2025. This economic precarity intersects with marginalisation experienced by young people with disabilities, refugees and asylum seekers, LGBTQI+ youth, those living in poverty, and residents of under-resourced rural or peri-urban communities. Meaningful participation typically requires access to quality education, resources, healthcare, and digital infrastructure.
Post-apartheid South Africa has attempted to support new forms of citizenship through its constitution, revised school curriculum, youth development policies, and numerous NGOs and social enterprises. However, these participatory possibilities are constrained by deep intersecting inequities—race, class, gender, and geography.
Emerging Themes
Personal engagement, especially for young women, includes the tension between being given a platform and being challenged on online platforms, particularly as the growing manosphere provides a platform for chauvinistic and misogynistic hate speech.
The tension lies in how young people’s attention is drawn to urgent, firsthand social ills, where residents face substance abuse and a lack of basic amenities; abstract threats such as climate change can receive less attention. This is not because these threats are unimportant to them, but because the severity of immediate struggles leaves little room for what feels distant.
The gradual, largely “invisible” degradation of the environment, including polluted rivers and beaches, can therefore be normalised or overlooked. This changes when floods and fires make environmental harm suddenly visible, confronting residents with its devastating effects on lives, infrastructure, homes and the natural environment.
Durban has a historic draw for young people from rural to urban areas, driven by inequities in educational facilities and employment opportunities. To address the lack of employment opportunities, the municipality and NGOs provide internships, volunteer roles, and part-time employment. Young people often take up these opportunities not because they align with their interests, but for economic reasons. Tensions between rural and urban identities may lead young people to pursue individual engagement to maintain cultural practices at home but also collectively at work.
In Durban, art-activism is strongly resurgent, rooted in historical resistance, visual and performance art, and later HIV/AIDS activism. This form of engagement addresses tensions between art for entertainment, education, and political resistance, while also bridging the divide between limited physical resources and/or traditional qualifications by including all residents and enabling work to reach public spaces, even on a small budget.
