In 1959 Cato Manor, an area a few kilometers from Durban's city centre, attracted attention from around the world when rioting broke out in protest against the city's beerhalls and the looming prospect of mass forced removals in which the residents would be uprooted from their homes in terms of the notorious Group Areas Act, and resettled in townships.

Background, the Beginnings of Cato Manor

Cato Manor was named after George Christopher Cato, Natal pioneer and first mayor of Durban.

Cato was born in London, England in 1814. He came to South Africa as a trader. He was asked to plan D'Urban while it was still under the Natalia Republic Government and when D'Urban achieved municipal status in 1845 he was elected as the first Mayor.

In 1865 Cato was granted an area of land behind the current day Natal University. The area was named Cato Manor, it was an extensive piece of colonial acreage awarded by royal decree to George Christopher Cato, in exchange for harbour frontage land expropriated by the military.

The land was sub-divided in the early 1900s and leased to Indian market gardeners, many of whom were either former indentured labourers, who had come to South Africa to work on the sugar plantations, or their descendents. Black Africans started moving into the area in the late 1920s. The Indian settlers leased small plots to African families prohibited by law from buying land of their own. These rented properties, in turn, became a maze-like shantytown the Zulu called Mkhumbane, named after a stream running through it.

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