Durban University of Technology

The Durban University of Technology is a Leading University of Technology in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was formed in 2002 by the merger of Technikon Natal and ML Sultan Technikon and was previously known as the Durban Institute of Technology. It has five campuses in Durban, and two in Pietermaritzburg. In 2016, around 27 023 students were enrolled. It is one of 5 technical institutions on the continent to offer Doctoral Degrees.HistoryThe Durban University of Technology is a result of the merger in April 2002 of two technikons, ML Sultan and Technikon Natal. It was named the Durban Institute of Technology and later became the Durban University of Technology in late 2007.KwaZulu-Natal’s Indian population began arriving in the 1860s to work on the sugar plantations. In 1927, those with no educational qualifications were threatened with repatriation. This threat stimulated adult classes in literacy, as well as a range of commercial subjects, held in a mission school and a Hindu institute, but it was not until after the war, and thanks to substantial financial support from the public, that M L Sultan College came into being. It would be another decade, however, before the city council, now preoccupied with the structures of the first Group Areas Act of 1950, allocated suitable land for a permanent campus. The Natal Technical College was founded in 1907 and immediately began providing tuition to more than 350 part-time students. The structures of apartheid as it was codified through legislation weighed heavily on this institution as well. In 1955 the college was taken over by national education authorities; and in 1967 it became an exclusively white institution.