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Port Elizabeth - History |
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When Bartholomew Daiz sailed into the Bay in 1482, two groups of indigenous people dominated the area - the San hunters (Bushmen), who lived in the inland valleys and gorges, and the Koisan, who were nomadic herders and occupied the coast. Daiz named the Bay Algoa Bay, the first port of call for ships outward bound to Goa, India, and for a hundred years it remained in the hands of the Portuguese as part of the Cape Route to India.
The founder of commercial development in the Bay was the legendary merchant Frederick Korsten, who in the first two decades of the nineteenth century built a flourishing circle of businesses, including a whaling station, seal fisheries, a tannery and retail stores. He bought contracting vessels to transport produce from his land to the Western Cape. Sadly today only the ruins of his gracious homestead Cradock Place, have remained in Korsten, the residential area named after him. By this time the Xhosa had become the most dominant black group in the area.
A major factor in this development was the opening in 1926 of the General Motors manufacturing plant in Port Elizabeth. Other auto manufacturers followed, and Port Elizabeth soon became known as the little Detroit of South Africa.
Today, Port Elizabeth is the economic powerhouse of the Eastern Cape Province. Its economy is well diversified: a huge motor and motor component industry, but also well established textile, food, hides and skins and pharmaceutical industries. In 1993, Port Elizabeth became the first city with a fully democratic non-racial City Council in South Africa. |
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A
great number of businesses sprung up in the area, and within a century,
the settlement had developed from sand dunes to an industrial city.
The
opening of the Charl Malan Quay in 1933 increased the capacity of the
harbour and was a major factor in the development of the local economy.