Our Annual North Coast Big 5 Competition gets everyone in the community and all the visitors from the 1st of December to the end of February to vote for their favourite places on the North Coast so we can highlight some of the best spots to everyone...You can read the map below or the Big 5 Article to find out who the winners were...or click on the Hands which are quick links to the different categories on the website....

BALLITO & SURROUNDS

The area of Compensation Beach was discovered by a group of entrepreneurs in 1953 and they began developing the land. Ballito meaning ‘Little Ball’ was proclaimed a township in 1954, became a town board in 1966 and reached borough status in 1986. Today Ballito is a bustling town full of character that is enjoying rapid growth and everything we need is right here!!

“The nice part about living in a small town is that when you don't know what you are doing, someone else does.” - Anonymous

Scenic towns of interest on the North Coast:

Umdloti

Shaka’s Kraal

Westbrook

Umhlali
Tongaat

Glendale

Zimbali

Tinley Manor

Ballito

Zinkwazi

Chaka’s Rock

Blythedale

Salt Rock

Stanger
Sheffield Beach
Esenembe

History of the Zulu People...

Southern Africa's contribution to the Cradle of Mankind is borne out by several important archaeological sites...not least the Border Caves of our Zulu Kingdom's northeastern quadrant. Here lies evidence of 150 000 years of human occupation and some of the oldest Homo sapiens remains on earth.

These 'ancient ones' were the small- statured, ochre-skinned races of Later Stone Age hunter-gatherer generically referred to as Bushmen. Related neither to the Zulu nor their deeply revered ancestors, the Bushmen were descendants of Early Stone Age progenitors who had enjoyed the same fruits of this bountiful terrain for a million-plus years before them. Clans and loosely-connected family groups followed seasonal game migrations between mountain-range and coastline...living in caves, beneath rocky overhangs or in temporary shelters of branches and antelope skins.

These nomadic people neither domesticated animals nor cultivated crops, even though their knowledge of both flora and fauna was encyclopedic. Bushmen 'classified' thousand of plants and their uses - from nutritional to medicinal, mystical to recreational and lethal - while displaying their spiritual connection with the creatures around them in the fascinating rock-art which continues to intrigue modern investigators.

The Bushmen probably imagined no deviations in lifestyle beyond those compelled by the fluctuations of nature, but forces of change were gathering to their north...

Zulu Ancestors
In the Great Lakes region of sub-equatorial Central-to-East Africa lived black races collectively labelled by early European anthropologists as 'Bantu' - a term derived from the Zulu collective noun for 'people', but used in certain scholarly circles to differentiate black languages from the click-tongues of Bushmen to the south.

Among these so-called Bantu were the Zulu ancestors - the Nguni people. Named after the charismatic figure who in a previous epoch had led a migration from Egypt to the Great Lakes via the Red Sea corridor and Ethiopia, this new home of the Nguni is the mystical Embo of Zulu storytellers to the present day.

Both pastoralists and rudimentary agriculturalists, Nguni wealth was measured in cattle - a tradition that continues throughout the modern Zulu Kingdom. There was, however, no central authority at that time...nor was there even a clan called Zulu among those who constituted the Nguni people.

The first KwaZulu

Whatever their number, Zulu's wives and followers accompanied the new clan head further south to the Mkhumbane River basin where, amid the tall euphorbia trees destined to become the symbol of chieftancy, the man called Heaven established his own small realm - the first KwaZulu, or Place of Heaven.

And as was taking place throughout Nguni territory, Zulu built his homestead according to the traditional blueprints. The layout proscribed a central, circular cattle-fold with the pole-and-thatch 'beehive' huts of family members and retainers arranged in a crescent at the higher end of a sloping piece of land. Hut floors were a densely compacted mixture of ant-hill sand and cow-dung, polished to resemble a dark green marble.

Small, irregularly shaped fields for planting grains and vegetables were identified nearby and protected from animals with interlaced thorn- branch hedges. Homesteads were thus self-sufficient entities.

People of Heaven

According to oral tradition, Zulu's descendants - the amaZulu, or People of Heaven - settled the White Umfolozi valley under the chieftainship of Zulu's great-grandson Ndaba kaPhunga - The Man of Affairs.

The Zulu continued to live a peaceful existence when the mantle of leadership was passed to Jama - He of the Stern Countenance - even though crucial power struggles were developing all around them as paramount chiefs dreamed of statehood.

The Zulu chiefdom was small, relatively insignificant and subordinate to Dingiswayo, ruler of the emerging Mthethwa state. Zulu territory was, however, strategically important to Dingiswayo's rivalry with the equally-rapacious Ndwandwe leaders, and he cultivated the allegiance of Jama's heir-apparent, Senzangakhona - He Who Acts with Good Reason.

When Senzangakhona succeeded his father in the late 1700s, Dingiswayo afforded him freer rein and military expansion in exchange for securing a 'buffer zone' against the Mthethwa's enemies. Senzangakhona never lived to see the ultimate result of the Mthethwa- Ndwandwe battle for supremacy - he died in 1816, a year before the Ndwandwe defeated the Mthethwa army, overran their territory and killed paramount chief Dingiswayo.

All that now stood between the Ndwandwe and total dominance of the entire region between Phongolo and Thukela Rivers was the small Zulu state under its new leader - the illegitimate son of Senzangakhona and Nandi - King Shaka.

Enter Shaka Zulu

Nandi had conceived before official recognition as the chief's wife, and her obvious pregnancy was unconvincingly dismissed as affliction by an intestinal beetle known in Zulu medical circles as a 'shaka'.

That name was duly given to the baby upon his birth in 1787. Although his father's eldest son, Shaka's ill-timed arrival denied him heir- apparent status, but overlord chief Dingiswayo was aware of Shaka's courage and budding military genius.

And after Shaka had orchestrated the murder of his younger brother and legitimate heir to the Zulu throne, Dingiswayo sent a military force to assist Shaka seize the chieftainship.

The young leader justified his overlord's patronage with regional military successes against the Mthethwa's enemies, but when that state was overrun and Dingiswayo assassinated, Shaka Zulu found himself the sole object of Ndwandwe battle plans.

To read more interesting information of the Zulu history & heritage click here.