Estcourt

Estcourt is a town in the uThukela District of KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. The main economic activity is farming with large bacon and processed food factories situated around the town. The N3 freeway passes close to the town, linking it to the rest of South Africa.LocationEstcourt is located at the confluence of the Bushmans and the Little Bushmans River. It is also on the main Durban - Johannesburg railway line some 160 km north of Durban and 25 km south of the Tugela River crossing. In earlier years the main road, later to become the N3, passed through the town. The town itself is 1196 m above sea level and lies in the hilly country that dominates most of the Natal Midlands. The Drakensberg lies some 41 km to the west of the town.The Nineteenth CenturyThe earliest identifiable inhabitants of the Estcourt area were the bushmen, a hunter-gather people, though rock engravings dating from four different iron age periods have been found on the farm Hattingsvlakte. The bushmen had been displaced by the Bantu people, a pastoral people and in particular the Zulu, a tribe that traced its origins as a separate nation to the early eighteenth century. The bushmen had sought sanctuary in the foothills of the Drakensberg. In the early nineteenth century the Zulu king Shaka used the weapon of Mfecane (genocide) to build his empire. Thus, when the white settlers first arrived in the Estcourt area, the land appeared to be almost uninhabited.