Kwa Zulu Natal was originally inhabited by the San people (or bushmen as they are sometimes referred to), some 30,000 years ago. They were nomadic hunter gatherers and later some groups became herding communities. The San people are now only to be found in the Northern Cape province of South Africa.

About 2000 years ago farmers of the Bantu speaking people (with four main language groups) crossed the Limpopo River from what is now Zimbabwe. They gradually drifted south. The Zulu speakers moved into what is now Kwa Zulu Natal and established a Zulu Kingdom under Shaka in the early 19^th Century. In 1824 King Shaka gave a British party some land in Port Natal (now Durban).

In 1843 the Colony of Natal was officially annexed by Britain and large scale immigration from Britain followed. By this time hostilities between the British and Dutch settlers and the Zulu people over access to grazing land were increasing. These clashes culminated in the Great Zulu War of 1879 which resulted in the subjugation of the Zulu people to British rule. Taxes were imposed on the Zulu people which forced them into the cash economy.

Before the subjugation of the Zulu people, there was a shortage of labour to work on the sugar farms established by the British. In 1860 300 Indian indentured labourers were brought to Natal to meet this shortage. Many more were shipped to South Africa after this. Traders followed voluntarily. Most never went back to India and their descendants now form the second largest population group in Kwa Zulu Natal.

Over time, many Zulu men went to work in the gold mines of what is now Gauteng around Johannesburg. They were transported in vast numbers by rail, the tracks between Durban and Johannesburg having been completed in 1895. In 1904 the opening to Durban's natural harbour was enlarged to allow for bigger ships to meet the demands of a growing industrial economy both in Durban itself and inland around Johannesburg.

In 1922 Durban's strongly English city council introduced legislation to restrict the sale of land in the city to whites. This pre-dated Afrikaner nationalist party led apartheid by 26 years.

World War II saw something of an economic boom in South Africa. This lead to a large influx of people to the cities to meet the demand for labour in the manufacturing sector. Durban became an important centre for the textile industry as well as for motor assembly, the petro-chemical industry and the food industry. Transport increasingly contributed a large proportion to the local economy.

The end of the war coincided with the nationalist party coming to power in 1948 and the beginnings of formally institutionalised apartheid. Political resistance under the banner of the African National Congress in the 1950's was strong, but the ANC was banned in 1960 and forced underground. The trade union federation Sactu, that was allied to the ANC also went largely underground. A State of Emergency was declared. The ANC concluded that they only way forward was to establish and armed guerilla wing, which became Umkhonto we Sizwe - Spear of the Nation.

By the early 1970's the growing industrial working class in Durban was militant and increasingly resistant to the ongoing virtual ban on trade union activity and strikes for black people. Dock workers struck illegally in 1972, followed by a general strike amongst almost all industrial workers in and around the city in 1973. This strike gave birth to the regeneration of trade union activity amongst the black working class in the whole of South Africa.      

Transport and General Workers' Union (a partner in the formation of Satawu in 2000) was born directly out of the Durban strikes of 1973. Sarhwu (the other merger partner) was a Sactu union forced underground in the early 1960's.

By the 1980's Durban was the busiest port in Africa. It remains a critical transport hub for the whole Southern Africa region. The manufacturing sector - especially textiles and clothing - has suffered a decline in recent years. The trade union movement is strong in the province.  

Party political control of Kwa Zulu Natal Province currently lies with the ANC. Previously power was shared between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), whose leader is Chief Buthelezi.