Port St Johns, central to the Wild Coast

Some local history

“Every mile of the Wild Coast has been marked by the footprints of shipwrecked persons wandering dejectedly in search of help.”

T.V. Bulpin, Mobil Treasury of Travel Series 10. 1973

Port St Johns has a recorded history stretching back before the Great Fire of London. A trading route between the Xhosa to the South and the Zulu nation to the North, the Transkei has seen many different peoples visit and move.

Home for the San people for thousands of years, in the early 1600's this region was first inhabitetied by migration from the North by Zulu and from the South by Xhosa peoples. There are now four major societal groups: the AmaBomvana, the AmaMpondo, the AmaMpondomise and the AbaThembu.

The region that is the Transkei stretches from the Kei River to the South to the Umtamvuna River to the North. It encompasses Pondoland and the Wild Coast, and has a heritage that is unique in South African story. Retaining its independence throughout the centuries, it has bred its own heroes and villains:

King Faku, who fought off the English, the Boer, the Xhosa and Zulu, threw enemies off cliffs, created, and some would say impoverished, the Pondo Nation and, incidentally, banned circumcision;

Nongqause, mistaken spirit medium who brought about the "Cattle Killing" in 1857 lived just North of the Kei River;

"Captain" Sydney Turner, who lived on the current site of Cremorne Estate, owned at least one trading ship that plied the Wild Coast, promoted the wreck of the Grosvenor EastIndiaman as a potential treasure ship and attempted to build a harbour in Northern Pondoland to rival Port St Johns in 1885;

John Henderson Soga, born in the Transkei, educated in Scotland, missionary, composer and author of a history of the Pondo People;

607 Swazi, Pondo and Basuto volunteers, including the Pondo Chief Boklein from Nyandeni, who stamped their death dance on the deck of the SS Mendi English troopship as it sank off the Isle of Wight in 1917;

Oliver Reginald Tambo, born in Bizana, 1917 President of the ANC, 1967 to 1991.

Winnie Mandela, born in Bizana, and Nelson Rohihahla Mandela, born in Qunu, on the Pondoland border.