The eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality () is a metropolitan municipality, created in 2000, that includes the city of Durban and surrounding towns. eThekwini is one of the 11 districts of the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. As of 2011, the majority of its 3,442,361 inhabitants spoke isiZulu.
In an 1859 Zulu grammar book, Bishop Colenso asserted that the root word ' means 'bay of the sea', from the name Mtheku, used by the Thabethe tribes clan, who were the leaders of the Nguni people. Furthermore the original local inhabitants noted that the locative form, ', was used as a proper name for Durban.
An 1895 English-Zulu dictionary translates the base word ' as 'bay', 'creek', 'gulf' or 'sinus', while a 1905 Zulu-English dictionary notes that ' is used for Durban.
eThekwini is surrounded by:
The 2001 census divided the municipality into the following main places:
The following statistics are from the 2011 census.
As of 2011.
As of 2022
The municipal council consists of 222 members elected by mixed-member proportional representation. 111 councillors are elected by first-past-the-post voting in 111 wards, while the remaining 111 are chosen from party lists so that the total number of party representatives is proportional to the number of votes received.
In the 2021 local government elections, the African National Congress lost their majority on the city council for the first time since the metro's establishment in 2000.
The following table shows the detailed results of the election.