KwaZulu-Natal Literary Tourism Route

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Mohatma Gandhi features on the KwaZulu-Natal literary tourism route.

© Chris Marais

The KwaZulu-Natal Literary Tourism Route is at the cutting edge of an exciting form of travel, where you follow the lives of the famous writers who lived and worked in a certain area.

And in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, the Literary Tourism Route is a journey that calls up the spirits of renowned writers like Alan Paton, Lewis Nkosi, Ronnie Govender and the legendary Rider Haggard, to name but a few.

Travel around Pietermaritzburg on the trail of Paton (writer of 'Cry, the Beloved Country', among other works), in the place he called 'the lovely city'. He was one of the first white establishment figures to stand firmly against apartheid. Paton is a favourite with South African literary tourism.

Rider Haggard, of 'King Solomon's Mines' fame, was a literary romantic personified and another world-famous figure celebrated on this literary tourism route. His first foothold in South Africa came in the form of a commission on the staff of Sir Henry Bulwer, Lieutenant-Governor of Natal. 

Lewis Nkosi, who now lives in Switzerland, based his main protagonist in 'Mating Birds' in the Cato Manor region. Popular among literary tour routes in KwaZulu-Natal, the Cato Manor Writers' Trail follows his career as a journalist and his move to writing essays and novels.

Ronnie Govender also wrote about Cato Manor (in 'At The Edge and Other Cato Manor Stories'), and this celebrated playwright holds a medal from the English Academy of South Africa for his contribution to English literature.

A place where many famous writers and political figures networked was in Grey Street, Durban. The Grey Street Writers Tour – held on the last Thursday of every month – remembers luminaries like Mohatma Ghandi, Fatima Meer and Aziz Hassim.

Grey Street is still the spiritual epicentre of KwaZulu-Natal's Indian community, many of whose ancestors came out to South Africa as indentured labourers in the mid-1800s, to work the cane fields of Natal.