Gqeberha

Khoekhoe herders and, further east, Xhosa farmers used the country around Algoa Bay long before Europeans settled it. Portuguese navigators charted the bay in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and left a stone cross on a nearby headland. A British garrison built the stone Fort Frederick in 1799 above the mouth of the Baakens River, to guard Algoa Bay against a French landing during the Napoleonic Wars.

The town proper dates from 1820, when several thousand British settlers were landed here and sent inland to farm the frontier district. The acting governor of the Cape, Sir Rufane Donkin, named the new town after his wife Elizabeth, who had died in India, and raised a stone pyramid to her memory on the hill above it. Port Elizabeth grew fast as the outlet for wool from the interior, with a harbour, banks, a railway inland from 1873 and a merchant class whose villas and public buildings still define the old centre.

Industry followed in the twentieth century, above all motor assembly: General Motors and Ford built in the city and Volkswagen at neighbouring Uitenhage, now Kariega, making it the home of South Africa's motor vehicle industry. Segregation shaped the city hard — South End, a mixed district near the sea, was cleared under the Group Areas Act, and New Brighton and the northern townships became centres of resistance, producing leaders of the trade unions and the liberation movement. Since 1994 the city has been part of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro, and in February 2021 it was officially renamed Gqeberha, after the Xhosa name for the Baakens River.

The city's culture sits where Xhosa, Afrikaans and English-speaking South Africa meet. isiXhosa is spoken across the metro, Afrikaans is strong in the northern suburbs and among coloured communities, and English is the language of business and of the old settler institutions. Names on street signs and buildings have been changing since 2021, and both the old and new names remain in daily use.

Music and sport carry much of the local identity. The townships have a deep choral tradition, church and school choirs competing at a high level, alongside jazz and gospel. Cricket at St George's Park is famous for its brass band, which plays through the day's play, and rugby and football fill the World Cup stadium beside North End Lake. The city produced Sekunjalo-era jazz players, boxers and Springboks, and sport is followed across the community lines.

Public art is unusually visible. The Route 67 works climb the hill from the Donkin Reserve, marking Nelson Mandela's years of public service, and murals and memorials record the struggle history of the northern townships. The seafront shapes leisure: early-morning walkers and runners on the promenade, surf lifesaving clubs, weekend braais on the grass above the beaches and boat trips out to the seabird islands of Algoa Bay.

The Nelson Mandela Bay metro, of which Gqeberha is by far the largest part, has around 1.2 million people, making it the biggest urban area in the Eastern Cape. Life is divided by geography inherited from apartheid: the coastal suburbs of Summerstrand, Humewood and Walmer, the older inner districts around the centre and Richmond Hill, and the large townships to the north, where a majority of residents live and where services are thinnest.

Motor manufacturing remains the backbone of the economy, with assembly plants and a long chain of component suppliers, alongside two ports — the city harbour and the deepwater terminal at Ngqura north of it — plus food processing, call centres, a university and a growing tourism trade. Unemployment is high even by South African standards, and many households depend on grants and on work in other provinces.

Days begin early, with commuter traffic and minibus taxis heading in from the north, and end early outside the restaurant strips. Water has been the dominant local issue in recent years: the dams supplying the metro fell to critical levels in a long drought and restrictions became part of ordinary life, on top of the national electricity cuts. The wind is a constant, and locals plan beach days around it.

The sea sets the menu. Line fish such as kob, yellowtail and elf come off the boats in Algoa Bay, calamari is landed along this coast and squid from the nearby harbours is a regional speciality, and hake and chips is the standard cheap meal. Seafood platters of prawns, mussels and calamari fill the beachfront restaurants, and mussels are gathered along the rocky shores.

Xhosa home cooking is the other foundation: umngqusho, samp and beans cooked slowly until soft, often described as Mandela's favourite dish; umphokoqo, a dry crumbly maize porridge eaten with sour milk; and meat from an animal slaughtered for a family ceremony. In the townships smiley, a singed and boiled sheep's head, and walkie-talkies, grilled chicken feet and heads, are sold from street grills, and shisa nyama grill houses cook meat to order.

The settler and Afrikaner traditions supply the rest: the braai as the weekend default, boerewors, biltong and droëwors, Karoo lamb from the interior, milk tart and koeksisters. Pineapples grown along the coast towards Bathurst and chicory from Alexandria are the district's crops, and local craft breweries and the fortified and table wines of the Eastern Cape and the Karoo edges round out the drinks list alongside rooibos tea.