Durban University of Technology

THE DURBAN University of Technology was established in 2002, the result of a merger between two much older institutions: the M L Sultan College, which to begin with had operated exclusively for the substantial Indian population in and around Durban; and the equally racially defined Natal Technical College for whites. Both have their roots in the early years of the 20th century.

KwaZulu-Natal’s Indian population had begun arriving in the 1860s to work on the sugar plantations. In 1927, those with no educational qualifications were threatened with repatriation. This threat stimulated adult classes in literacy, as well as a range of commercial subjects, held in a mission school and a Hindu institute, but it was not until after the war, and thanks to substantial financial support from the public, that M L Sultan College came into being. It would be another decade, however, before the city council, now preoccupied with the strictures of the first Group Areas Act of 1950, allocated suitable land for a permanent campus.

The Natal Technical College was founded in 1907 and immediately began providing tuition to more than 350 part-time students. The strictures of apartheid as it was codified through legislation weighed heavily on this institution as well. In 1955 the college was taken over by national education authorities; and in 1967 it became an exclusively white institution.

All that has now changed. The merged Durban University of Technology combines the best of both earlier institutions. It operates on five different campuses in Durban, and two in Pietermaritzburg, offering tuition through its six faculties of Accounting and Informatics; Applied Sciences; Arts and Design; Engineering and the Built Environment; Health Sciences; and Management Sciences. In 2007, the university employed 566 academic staff, 46 percent of them female and 12 percent holding masters and doctoral degrees.