Mdantsane is a South African urban township situated 15km away from East London and 37 km away from King William's Town in the Eastern Cape province. The name Mdantsane was derived from a stream that ran from the Nahoon River down to the Buffalo River. Some believe the stream was called Dontsane. Soon after the stream was named, a “white farm” which was at the entrance of Mdantsane was also named after the stream Dontsane or Umdanzani. The township is part of the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality in the Eastern Cape.HistoryIn the 1940s, living quarters for black East London workers were hard to find and in the early 1950s the City Engineer was requested to find space for expansion, on suitable land adjoining Duncan Village. In 1957, the East London municipality received an instruction from the apartheid South African government to submit an application for a new township for its African residents. On February 20, the Minister of the Department of Bantu Administration and Development announced that the entire African (black) population of East London was to be moved to a new site called Mdantsane. The first houses were built in late 1963 with removals planned for 1964. However, removals and resettlement began in 1963. Mdantsane was formally established in 1963 on a farm called “ Umdanzani” and the first 300 residents occupied the new houses. The original inhabitants were people who were forcibly removed from what was known as East Bank in East London. The East Bank was a multiracial residential area. Mdantsane was recognised as a homeland town in the South African apartheid government-created bantustan of Ciskei in 1966.
