Current Time in Richards Bay, South Africa

Richards Bay lies on the Indian Ocean coast of KwaZulu-Natal in eastern South Africa, about one hundred and eighty kilometres north-east of Durban. It is built around a wide lagoon at the mouth of the Mhlathuze River, sheltered by dunes and fringed by mangroves, and it possesses the deepest natural harbour in Africa. The climate is warm and subtropical, humid in summer and mild in winter, and sugar cane, eucalyptus plantations and coastal forest surround the town.

The urban area is home to around one hundred and fifty thousand people, and together with neighbouring Empangeni it forms the municipality of uMhlathuze. Its economy is founded almost entirely on the port, which handles more cargo by weight than any other in the country. The coal terminal here is among the largest in the world, exporting the output of the Mpumalanga coalfields brought down on a dedicated heavy-haul railway. Aluminium smelters, one of the biggest heavy mineral sands operations anywhere, extracting titanium minerals and zircon from the dunes, a paper mill and the export of wood chips, ferroalloys and grain make it one of the great industrial concentrations of southern Africa.

The bay was named after Sir Frederick Richards, a naval commodore who landed troops here during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, though the area had long been home to Zulu communities and to a small fishing settlement. For most of the twentieth century it remained a quiet holiday and angling spot. Everything changed in the late 1960s, when the South African government chose the lagoon as the site of a new deep-water port. The town was formally proclaimed in 1969, the harbour opened in 1976, and industry followed at speed, dividing the lagoon into a working harbour on one side and a protected sanctuary on the other.

That sanctuary, along with the surrounding wetlands, gives Richards Bay an unusual character for an industrial city. Hippopotamuses, crocodiles, flamingos and hundreds of bird species live within sight of the port, and boardwalks and bird hides allow visitors to see them. Alkantstrand beach is popular for swimming and surfing, and deep-sea fishing charters leave the harbour daily. Just to the north lies the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, a World Heritage site of lakes, dunes and estuaries, and the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi game reserve, one of the oldest protected areas in Africa and the place where the white rhinoceros was saved from extinction, is within easy reach.

The population combines Zulu, English and Afrikaans speaking communities along with people drawn from across the country and abroad by industrial employment, and Zulu culture remains strong in the surrounding district. The University of Zululand and a technical and vocational college nearby provide higher education, with strong engineering and maritime programmes. The town is served by an airport, the national road network and the railway that sustains the port.

Richards Bay is important as the leading bulk export harbour of South Africa and as an industrial city set among remarkable coastal wilderness.