The nomadic San hunter/gatherers were the earliest group of people to inhabit the Eastern Cape at least 100,000 years ago. The forefathers of the isiXhosa speaking people arrived on the banks of the Kei River in 800AD. Xhosa form the second largest group in South Africa after the Zulus. The Bantu language of the Xhosa is related to Zulu and spoken by 7 million people.
Whilst on his epic voyage of discovery, searching for a sea route to the East, the Portuguese Navigator Bartolemeu Dias, rounded the “Cabo da Roca” in February 1488 and entered the Baia da Roca (Cape and Bay of the Rock) and now Cape Recife and Algoa Bay. Vasco de Gama noted the nearby Bird Island in 1497 but for years the area was marked on navigational charts as simply ‘a landing place with fresh water’.
One of the main goals of the Portuguese navigators in the Indian Ocean was to take over the lucrative trade of Arab and Afro-Arab merchants who plied routes between the East African coast and India. They succeeded in so doing and in establishing trade with their colony in Goa. The name ‘Algoa’ meant ‘to Goa’ just as the port further north in present day Mozambique, ‘Delgoa’ meant ‘from Goa’. Algoa reflected that it was the port from which ships left during the season of favourable winds, while Delgoa was the port in Africa at which they arrived from Goa when the winds were favourable for the return trip.
This area was part of the Cape Colony that had a turbulent history between its founding by the Dutch East India Company in 1652 and the formation of he Union of South Africa in 1910. Over 4,000 British settlers arrived in 1820 and on 6th June that year Sir Rufane Donkin, Acting Governor of the Cape Colony, named the new seaport in memory of his late wife Elizabeth.
Today Port Elizabeth is a man made general cargo port on the western edge of Algoa Bay – now renamed Nelson Mandela Bay (See below), 384 nautical miles southwest of Durban and 423 nautical miles east of Cape Town. The first jetty was built in 1837 and by 1877 Port Elizabeth had become the principal port of South Africa. Today Port Elizabeth is the 3rd largest port and 5th largest city in South Africa and is the hub of the SA automotive industry with many of the major international vehicle and component manufacturers based in the area – Ford, Volkswagen (All UK Gulfs are built in SA).
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The photo is of the 52metre high Campanile, built in 1923 in memory of the first British settlers who arrived in 1820. It is sited at the spot where they landed and contains a carillon of 23 bells.
Honouring a living Legend – Nelson Mandela Bay
In 2000, Dr Mandela consented to the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality, that includes Port Elizabeth and the towns of Uitenhage and Despatch, being named after him. Nelson Mandela was born in Qunu, a small village near Mthata (Umtata) in the former Transkei (Eastern Cape) on 18th July 1918. He helped to found the ANC Youth League and as you know was imprisoned for 27 years – 16 on Robben Island – for his ideals of a free non-racial democratic South Africa. In 1991, he was elected as President of the African National Congress (ANC) after he was released on the 10th May 1994 he became the first democratically elected South African President having won a landslide victory in the April 1994 elections. His ‘spirit of freedom’ can be best summed up in his own words as follows:
“I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society. If need be, it is an ideal for which I would die.”
(Quoted in Visitors Guide: Nelson Mandela Bay Tourism Guide.)
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