In case you missed it, read from the beginning of the series:
Bluff News from the 1950s – PART 1
Bluff News from the 1950s – PART 2
Bluff News from the 1950s – PART 3
Salisbury Island beach plans
A REPORT in the Mercury in December 1955 projected a ‘new playground’ for Durban – a beach on Salisbury Island. Enthusiasm for the idea stemmed from the need to replace Fynnland Beach which was scheduled to disappear when the new tanker turning basin was completed.
Bluff councillor Spanier Marson said he had put forward the idea because the railways and harbours ministry had “deprived the people of Fynnland of their beach”. The chairman of the council’s beach committee, Leo Boyd, supported Marson’s suggestion. At the time there was a rumour that the naval forces on Salisbury Island would be relocating to Simonstown.
A further report, headlined the ‘Pleasure island plan’, appeared early in 1957. But a new snag had materialised – sharks in the bay. Apparently the presence of sharks had increased considerably and were particularly prevalent in the channels leading to Salisbury Island. The cost of providing a shark-proof bathing enclosure seemed to curtail interest and nothing further came of the proposal.
Bayhead Road plan
April 1956 saw serious discussion underway between the city council and the national transport ministry on the construction of a new road link – Bayhead Road – from Kings Rest station to Maydon Road near the graving dock. Agreement had been reached on the intended siting and routing of the road. Local member of parliament, Norman Eaton said it was “essential to improve road communication between the Bluff and the city”.
Zanzibari land and race issue
Known as the Zanzibaris today, back in the 1950s, they posed a dilemma for both the city council and the government in terms of apartheid laws concerning racial classification and residential location.
Following a decision by the railways administration to acquire land in the vicinity of Kings Rest where the Zanzibaris lived, their relocation became a thorny issue. According to the native affairs department, they were not ‘natives’. Nor were they white, Indian or coloured, according to the city council. As such, there was no official certainty as to where they should live in terms of the Group Areas Act and the Population Registration Act.
They were descendants of African and Arab slaves who were liberated from slavery in 1873 by a British warship and brought to Durban. A report in the Mercury on February 2, 1956 referred to them as ‘clannish people’ who were determined to stay together and resist being individually dispersed.
More than a year later, the Daily News of 13 May, 1957 reported that the city council was negotiating with the Juma Musjid Trust to buy 26 acres of land on which the ‘lost tribe’ could be settled. But the final decision on the Zanzibaris’ fate was reported to be in the hands of the minister of the Interior, Dr TE Donges.
Bluff ‘entitled’ to a public swimming pool
The loss of bathing facilities at Fynnlands Beach through harbour development and the council’s decision to build a public swimming pool in Durban North had Bluff councillor Spanier Marson fuming in March 1956. “What has the Bluff got? No (tarred) roads, no pavements and no halls. Now that the Tesoriere Bath is established in Congella, Bluff residents are entitled to the facility of their own swimming pool,” said Marson. “An ideal site would be the Lieut. King Park which would cater for the Bluff population of almost 8,000.”
The council’s beach committee subsequently prioritised a construction list of public swimming pools. The Bluff was second on the list after Durban North. The list included pools for coloured and Indian residential areas and formed part of capital expenditure for the 1956/57 budget (Mercury, 21 March 1956).
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