Durban - As Mlungisi Mthembu walks along the dirt roads of Bhambayi informal settlement in Inanda, 26km outside Durban, he is greeted with “sanibona” and friendly waves.
The 20-year-old tour guide is passionate about uplifting his community, bringing tourists to Inanda, and creating more environmental awareness.
Mthembu was our guide on the Woza eNanda Bhambayi Urban Walk, which was created with the Woza eNanda campaign and the Durban Green Corridor, to promote places of historical and environmental interest in the township.
The trail can be booked through the Durban Green Hub, based at Blue Lagoon, where you can hire a guide.
The Bhambayi walk offers a glimpse of urban informal settlements wrapped in Durban’s history.
While the tourist routes into Inanda can be self-driven, using a guide makes it easier for tourists and locals who want to visit but aren’t certain how to get there and what to see.
“The walk starts at the Gandhi Phoenix settlement. We will park the car there and walk for about 2km through the settlement and end up back at Gandhi’s house,” explained Mthembu at the Green Hub.
While the walk, along with several other routes into Inanda, have been around for some time, the team at the Durban Green Corridor hopes to encourage more locals to make use of the activities and places of interest that have been developed in the area.
After about 15 minutes to the Phoenix settlement, which is well sign posted along the main road, we park in the shade of a tree that could have been around when Mohandas Gandhi, known as the Mahatma, lived there. The place where Gandhi lived was called old Phoenix.
Mthembu shared the history of the settlement, which was Gandhi’s home in Durban from 1904. Some say that as the locals did not know who Gandhi was, other than that he was from India, they called the place where he settled Bhambayi, an adaptation of the word Bombay (now Mumbai).
On the large plot of land, Gandhi created his home, called Sarvodaya, and a home for his second son Manilal, as well as a printing press for his paper, The Indian Opinion.
“The house was burnt down in 1985 during the Inanda riots, a battle between Indian and black people, and the house was recreated in 1999, keeping as much as possible to the original design,” said Mthembu.
A beautiful exhibition on the Shembe leader, Isaiah Shembe, and another on John Dube, first president of the ANC, can be found, along with an exhibition about Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba.
In December, more than 300 international tourists and more than 400 domestic tourists visited Gandhi’s house.
From Gandhi’s house, we walked into the surrounding informal settlement.
With goats and chickens running around, the community is alive with entrepreneurial spirit.
“At almost every corner you will find a beauty salon, or a shop selling sweets. People here try very hard to make a living, and better their lives. You will see houses made of tin lying next to RDP houses and then proper brick houses,” said Mthembu.
Coming from the community, Mthembu speaks passionately about wanting to see more development in the area, especially environmental education.
“Part of the area is like a wetland, you will see the reeds, and the birdlife is amazing.
“There are some nice gardens here but we need to create awareness about alien plants and indigenous plants. The team from Durban Green Corridor, including me, organised a clean-up of the rubbish that was being dumped in the area, which has made a big difference,” he said.
We wove through the narrow dirt roads past a traditional healer, a goat kraal, a shebeen and several tuck shops. We then walked along the main highway past the rush of taxis and shoppers on their way home, back to the stillness of Gandhi’s home.
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Arthi Sanpath, Independent On Saturday