Abstract
The abaTembu and amaMpondo’s donation in 1860 of land along the Mthatha river for a colonial settlement signalled the start of Mthatha’s function as a regional administrative centre. This administrative role reached a peak with its designation as the capital of the Transkei Bantustan in 1976. In post-apartheid South Africa Bhisho was designated in 1994 as the capital city of the new Eastern Cape province. This relegated Mthatha to the seat of the local and district municipality and had deleterious impacts on the fortunes of the city. The once well-functioning Bantustan capital saw the deterioration of its urban infrastructure and the precipitous decline of service delivery levels, hastened by political infighting in the municipality. This chapter explores the urban history, growth and development of Mthatha, culminating in an overview of the state of the city today and its future trajectory and prospects.
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Notes
- 1.
Mthatha was known as Umtata until the official orthographic correction of the name on 2 March 2004.
- 2.
- 3.
The only country in the world to recognise this independence was South Africa.
- 4.
“‘United’ was added after the addition of the Pondoland General Council in 1931” to the TTGC (Mangcu, 2019, p. 1045).
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Spocter, M., Donaldson, R. (2021). Mthatha (Umtata): From Tribal Buffer, to Homeland Capital, to Regional Integrator. In: Lemon, A., Donaldson, R., Visser, G. (eds) South African Urban Change Three Decades After Apartheid. GeoJournal Library(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73073-4_11
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