Business Traveller (Asia-Pacific)
Giant leap
Five years after hosting the World Cup, Durban has become a better place for business, reports Jenny Southan
Clipped into a harness, it takes about 20 minutes to climb the 500 steps to the top of Durban’s Moses Mabhida stadium. Halfway through the ascent, I watch a man grappling with a palpable fear of bungee jumping off it – he seems paralysed as he stares down at the pitch 80 metres below.
Built in 2009 for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the views from the summit are stunning. I can see the surging Indian Ocean and high-rises of downtown on one side, and a confluence of train lines arriving at the city’s central station on the other.
The influx of half a million football fans five years ago incentivised authorities to give the South African city a facelift. In addition to the 70,000-seat stadium, the beachside promenade was extended to an 8km strip that can be walked, run or cycled all the way from the Point in the south to Blue Lagoon in the north. The coast is popular with surfers as shores are wide and sandy, the waves are huge and shark nets have been in place since the 1950s.
A new airport for the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) – King Shaka International – was also unveiled for the occasion, 30 minutes up the coast in La Mercy. Meanwhile, many of the old warehouses and residences around the Point were restored, new buses and taxi ranks introduced, malls built and hotels opened.
Back down on the ground (there was no way I was brave enough to jump), I speak to James Seymour, chief executive of Durban KZN National Convention Bureau, who has been showing me around. “All along the seafront were big screens showing the soccer – it had this incredible carnival atmosphere,” he recalls. “Today, in North Beach we can set up a 10,000-capacity marquee for conventions, and we have one of the biggest annual leisure trade shows, Indaba [taking place next month], that puts on a beach party for 8,000 people,” he says.
In September, the city will host the World Routes forum, which will see 300 airlines and 800 airports represented. Durban has been campaigning for greater international airlift – at the moment, Asia-Pacific visitors have to travel with Emirates via Dubai, or change carriers in Johannesburg. Although from December Qatar Airways will be flying from Doha four times a week with a Dreamliner.
In 2007, the International Convention Centre (ICC) was doubled in size to offer 33,000 sqm of exhibition space. Next year, Durban will welcome 20,000 people for the biannual International AIDS Conference, becoming the only city in the world to have done so twice.
Seymour says: “We can close the roads around the site to create a convention precinct – you can’t do that in Cape Town or Jo’burg – and we have a stock of 15,000 hotel rooms for delegates, with about 3,600 in walking distance of the ICC.” Hilton Hotels and Resorts and Holiday Inn Express have hotels here, while Marriott is integrating Protea into its portfolio, but other than that there aren’t many international brands.
Local chain Tsogo Sun has nine properties in the city; the Southern Sun Elangeni and Maharani being the biggest, with 734 rooms. Two of the most established hotels are in the northerly neighbourhood of Umhlanga – Tsogo Sun’s Beverly Hills (visit businesstraveller.com for a review), which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, and the 86-room Oyster Box next door. Both
are high-end properties offering sea-facing rooms, outdoor pools and excellent service.
The area has also become Durban’s new commercial and entertainment hub. Mike Jackson, director of operations for Tsogo Sun in KZN, says: “A lot of banks and chartered accountant firms have moved to Umhlanga Ridge, away from the CBD. It’s the real upmarket spot.”
Lorna Gourlay, marketing and communications consultant for the Beverly Hills, says: “Fifty years ago, the hotel was set on sugar-cane farmlands and the roads were made of dirt. Before the Tollmans [the founders of Red Carnation Hotels] bought the Oyster Box nine years ago, it was a three-star cottage hotel for tea and curry. But it’s actually been good for business having them next door – it’s become a destination.”
On a tour of the Oyster Box, I’m told of the numerous film stars who’ve stayed over the years, and meet Hendry Pakeree, maître d’ of the Grill Room, who has worked at the property since he was a 13-yearold slave. It’s a startling reminder of South Africa’s divided past, and makes me think of the old prison wall outside the ICC, where a giant mural illustrates the country’s 1994 Interim Bill of Rights: the right to freedom from discrimination; the right to vote in secret; the right to a fair trial; the list goes on…
These days, about 70 per cent of Durban’s 3.5 million people are black Africans, while roughly 10 per cent are white and 20 per cent are Asian – the city has the largest Indian community in the world outside of India. Joanne Hayes, founder of Tumbleweed Communications, a PR company based in the city, says: “The British tried to get the Zulus to work on the sugar plantations but they wouldn’t, they thought it was beneath them. So they brought the Indians over on the condition that they would be paid well – but of course it didn’t turn out like that. They couldn’t get back home and were forced to stay.”
What about the Zulus? Seymour says: “They have traditional homesteads but also second homes in Durban where they work in the week. They are Westernised but very proud of their culture. They marry in the Christian way but still like to celebrate in the traditional way – they will slaughter an ox and sometimes celebrations will go on for many days.”
He adds: “In KZN we have one of the last authentic African ceremonies, the Zulu reed dance. If people want to arrange this as a corporate incentive, this could be woven in. The Zulu king is very open-minded and down to earth so if he hears of a specific group he will meet with them.”
If you have some free time, it’s an experience to venture into the Zulu medicine ( muthi) market. Here you will find an ominous collection of shacks and stalls selling stacks of tree bark, the hides of protected animals, snake skins, bones, bird skulls, herbs, coloured powders and even the odd dried-up monkey carcass. (Don’t try to photograph the healers, though – they don’t like it.)
In terms of industry, Durban has the busiest cargo port on the continent – you only have to look out to sea to spot the hulking container ships – and, in 2012, it was announced that state company Transnet had bought the old airport site in a R100 billion deal (US$8.24 billion) to turn it into a dug-out port by 2020. Work on a new passenger terminal for cruise ships is also due to start soon.
In addition, the city is a major manufacturing hub with companies as diverse as Toyota, Sumitomo (tyres), Aspen (pharmaceuticals), AECI (explosives and speciality chemicals) and Unilever (sustainable dry food). According to the 2014
Africa Wealth Report report from research company New World Wealth, Durban is forging highnet worth individuals quicker than anywhere else in the country.
Outside Durban, near the airport, is a growing “aerotropolis” known as Dube Tradeport. It incorporates Dube City, an “ultra green hub” for offices, shops, hotels and restaurants; the Trade Zone for freight forwarders and shippers; the Cargo Terminal; and the Agri Zone, described as “the most technologically advanced future farming platform on the continent”, growing salad, vegetables and flowers under glass. Last summer it was announced that Samsung Electronics was to open a TV manufacturing plant at Dube Tradeport by 2018.
With an array of varied landscapes – the beach, the bush, the battlefields and the Drakensberg mountains – the film industry is a growing contributor to the economy. Toni Monty, chief executive of the Durban Film Office, says: “We generate about R330 million [US$27.1 million] annually compared with R5.4 billion [US$444 million] for Cape Town, so it is fairly small, but there have been plans for years to build a big studio here.
“The country’s biggest independent producer, Video Vision Entertainment, which did the Mandela film Long
Walk to Freedom, has secured a big empty plot of land next to the Suncoast Casino so we hope to see it arrive in the next five years.”
Since the World Cup, it would seem Durban is scoring big.