Durban city centre is no longer what it used to be.

The tourist city – with a vibrant nightlife, a mosaic of cultures, and the nicest beaches along the Indian Ocean – has vanished right in front of our eyes.

As a Joburg-based Durbanite, I feel pity for the next generation of kids who will grow up with scarred memories of what used to be the most beautiful coastline in KwaZulu-Natal.

The rise of crime and grime, decay of infrastructure, and complete neglect that has become insidious across the city have already driven away a large number of prospective tourists this coming festive season.

The rise of crime and grime, decay of infrastructure, and complete neglect that has become insidious across the city have already driven away a large number of prospective tourists this coming festive season.

Walking down the streets in the Durban city centre right now you wouldn’t be able to tell that September is Tourism Month in South Africa.

There’s virtually no campaign to market the city as a tourism destination.

Cape Town and other cities that take themselves seriously are eating Durban for lunch. Clearly something other than fixing the city is preoccupying the powers that be at the city council.

Durban FunWorld will never look the same without the game machines. Picture: Tumi Pakkies/ African News Agency (ANA)

I was booked at one of the old, grand hotels on the South Beach promenade for three nights last week.

Arriving in the evening during load shedding, I quickly realised that life had been sucked away from South Beach.

The place was basically pitch dark, with no street lights save for a few buildings that had backup generators.

This has enabled the business of vagrants and ladies plying their trade in the oldest profession to thrive in an area previously reserved for money-spending tourists, right in front of the hotels lining Marine Parade.

I wanted to quickly go to a shop and buy something, but the hotel receptionist warned me to leave my phone behind if I ventured outside.

“Is crime that bad here now that I can't venture outdoors with my phone and it’s not even 9pm yet?” I asked.

“Trust me bro,” he replied. “You don’t want to find out.”

Mission aborted.

But it was not until the morning that the grim reality of the situation hit me like a brick in the face when I opened the curtains and saw the public swimming pools.

Dirty, with no water, and with the prospect of high levels of E coli in the ocean, Durban beachgoers are going to have it tough this year.

I wanted to go out for a morning jog along the beach, but I quickly decided against this when I logged into Twitter and saw videos of raw sewage seeping through public toilets at Bay of Plenty, right outside my hotel.

The last time I booked in South Beach was just before Covid-19 pandemic struck.

Clearly, a lot of things can change in the space of three years.

The city has deteriorated so much, not only in the tourist attraction areas. There are more than 80 known hijacked buildings in the Durban city centre.

Crime is rife in these buildings.

Hundreds of “amaphara” have completely taken over main arteries such as Russell Street.

They have turned the area under a bridge next to the Berea railway lines into a drug den. Railway lines are vandalised and stripped naked with no care.

The R450 million Durban Eye Ferris Wheel development that was promised for the Point Waterfront remains a dream three years down the line. The Durban FunWorld amusement park is being stripped bare in broad daylight after Nic Styen was forced out of business by the recalcitrant city council.

Whereas the City of Cape Town is cushioning ratepayers against the impact of higher stages of load shedding, eThekwini residents have to navigate the city centre streets in the dark when power cuts strike.

In 2021, eThekwini Municipality became the first metro in the country to seek proposals for a R324-billion private power generation initiative for the supply of 400MW to ease the burden on its 3.8 million residents.

But even this prospective investment appears to have ground to a halt and the city has been overtaken by Cape Town. Even the City of Tshwane is now preparing for private investment in energy generation.

This leaves many questions about the administration running eThekwini Municipality. Why has the state of infrastructure in Durban deteriorated so much in the past decade?

Siphelele Dludla is a senior reporter at Business Report.

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