I AM pleased to report that the City enjoyed a bumper Heritage Month with thousands of visitors flocking into Durban. What is exciting is that when these visitors arrived, they found most of our beaches open and safe for swimming. This can be attributed to the sterling work our technical teams continue to do to fix the pumpstations along the coastline. For the Heritage Day long weekend, the Municipality was able to achieve a 62% occupancy at hotels. 

The direct spend expected was R120 million with a contribution of R300 million to the GDP and 1 300 jobs created. It is important to note that the highest number of visitors were from Gauteng. We also attracted visitors from Germany, Belgium, China, India, Madagascar, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia. Most of these visitors were in town to attend South Africa’s premier business exhibition, the Durban Business Fair and Africa’s leading fashion event, the Durban Fashion Fair.

We are also expecting a bumper weekend this week as the City prepares to host the MTN 8 Final on 7 October at the iconic Moses Mabhida Stadium. This demonstrates that Durban is indeed open for business and people continue to believe in our ability to host major sporting events. Furthermore, to demonstrate that we remain Africa’s playground and a destination of choice for international events, we were recently announced as the 2025 host of the World Water Conference. In the same year, we will be welcoming international visitors to the World ECO-Summit. In November we are hosting the 13th World Congress of The World Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases. 

Contrary to what our detractors may want you to believe, the world still has confidence in us and what the city of Durban is capable of offering. Water and sanitation technical teams continue to work tirelessly to ensure all beaches are open during the festive season and beyond. Apart from beefing up our technical team by bringing on board experienced engineers, there is a collaborative effort between the scientific services, mechanical and wastewater network departments to clearly identify the sources for any identified coastal pollution. It is important for the public to know that the pollution of beaches is caused by a combination of factors including pump failure, load shedding, vandalism, or poor network infrastructure.

The fact that most of our bathing beaches are now open for swimming is testimony to this hard work by our technical teams. We want to assure residents and visitors that the City only opens the beaches that meet the quality standard for safety of bathing water. To this end, from 5 October, we have collaborated with independent laboratories such as Talbot and the Durban University of Technology to conduct water tests on the same spot, date and time and subsequently release them simultaneously.