What Nobody Tells You About the Zulu Men Who Still Pull Rickshaws in Durban

Sharing is caring!

In 1893, the first rickshaw rolled along a Durban street. It had arrived from Japan. Nobody expected it to last. Nobody expected what would happen next.

Over the following decades, the Zulu men who took on the job didn’t just adopt a vehicle. They turned it into something the world had never seen before — and never will again.

From Japan to the Indian Ocean Coast

Rickshaws came to Durban as practical tools — cheap, fast transport for a busy colonial port city. The early pullers were Zulu men drawn to the city for work. They were handed a uniform and a route. Nothing more.

But Zulu culture doesn’t do things halfway. The men began to decorate. First the rickshaws — vivid paint, geometric patterns, panels covered in glass beads. Then themselves.

The costumes grew over generations into something extraordinary. Each puller today wears a headdress taller than a man, built from ostrich feathers, painted animal horns, and cowtails. Beadwork that takes months to complete. Animal skins. Layered skirts of grass and hide.

The Art That Grew in Public

This wasn’t costuming for tourists. It was Zulu culture asserting itself — loudly, proudly, in the middle of a colonial city that hadn’t asked for it.

The beadwork on a Zulu rickshaw costume follows the same language as the love letters exchanged between young Zulu men and women — a coded system of colour and pattern with very specific meanings. Learn what every Zulu bead colour actually means and the pullers’ costumes become a text you can begin to read.

Each man’s outfit is his own. There is no standard template. The headdress alone can take two or three years to complete, feather by feather, horn by horn.

At Their Peak

By the early 1900s, more than 2,000 rickshas operated along Durban’s beachfront. The Zulu ricsha — the local spelling — became the defining image of the city.

British colonists rode them to church. Indian merchants used them for deliveries. Photographs from that era show the beachfront lined with pullers, their costumes blazing against the Indian Ocean.

Then motor taxis arrived. Slowly, then quickly, the ricsha began to disappear from the city’s streets.

Enjoying this? 5,600 South Africa lovers get stories like this every week. Subscribe free →

The Last Few

Today, a small group of pullers remains at the North Beach beachfront — perhaps twenty or thirty on a busy day. Some have been at it for decades. Others are younger men learning the craft from fathers and uncles.

They offer rides. They pose for photographs. But what they’re doing is something more significant: keeping alive one of the most unusual cultural traditions on the African continent.

The KwaZulu-Natal government has recognised the ricsha pullers as living heritage artists. Their costumes are protected craft objects. There is nothing quite like standing on Durban’s Golden Mile and watching a man in a ten-foot headdress break into a traditional Zulu dance as traffic waits patiently around him.

Durban, Where Cultures Collide

The Zulu ricsha is a perfect symbol of Durban’s identity. This is a city shaped by the Zulu kingdom, Indian traders, British colonialism, and the Indian Ocean — all pressed together into something that doesn’t exist anywhere else on earth.

A few minutes’ walk from the ricsha pullers, you’ll find Durban’s legendary bunny chow restaurants — hollowed loaves of bread filled with curry, born from the injustices of apartheid. The city holds its history in its food, its transport, its streets.

The same Zulu nation that defeated a British imperial army at Isandlwana in 1879 is the culture that produced the ricsha pullers. Both are expressions of the same fierce, creative, unbreakable spirit.

Nobody imported that. Nobody manufactured it. It grew here, on this coast, out of necessity and pride and something that doesn’t have a simple translation.

Come to Durban and stand on the beachfront. If you’re lucky, you’ll see it for yourself — the colours, the dance, the feathers catching the Indian Ocean breeze — and you’ll understand why this tradition refused to let itself be forgotten.

You Might Also Enjoy

• Why Every Zulu Bead Necklace Is a Love Letter That Outsiders Cannot Read
• The Durban Dish Born From Injustice That Became South Africa’s Soul Food
• The Morning Zulu Warriors Defeated an Empire — and the Hillside Where It Happened

Plan Your South Africa Trip

Ready to explore South Africa? Our free guide to South Africa’s hidden gems covers 25 extraordinary places most visitors never find — from secret beaches to ancient forests to places like Durban’s beachfront, where history is still very much alive.

Sharing is caring!