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Duncan Village is a township in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The township is located about five kilometres away from the East London central business district (CBD). Duncan Village is divided into six wards, with each headed by a ward councillor. There are no clear divisions between the informal and formal parts of the township since most shacks are planted on the open spaces within formal houses.
The response of the East London Municipality to the commission's recommendations was to build Duncan Village in 1941. By 1944, 628 houses had been completed in the new township. Contrary to the Thornton Commission's recommendations, the shacks were not demolished in East Bank. The first residents in Duncan Village were black African migrant workers from the rural areas surrounding East London and a small group of black Africans who regarded themselves as fully urbanised East London residents with no links to the rural areas. Hygiene proved to be a problem in Duncan Village, largely because the government was struggling to maintain the streets and sanitation. The township was dealing with a serious case of tuberculosis in the 1940s. In 1949 every third child born in the location died from the disease. To deal with the issue of overcrowding and poor hygiene in the township and surrounding areas, the East London Municipality created Mdantsane in 1962. Between 1964 and 1983, 80 000 people were moved from Duncan Village to Mdantsane.
In 1985, the East London Municipality launched a plan to improve Duncan Village into a middle-class neighbourhood. This proved unsuccessful as the state could not move the 15,000 shacks which were in the area at the time. In describing the government's attempt to move residents from Duncan Village to Mdantsane, one of the councillors interviewed by Patricia Ndhlovu for her research paper titled Understanding the local state, service delivery and protests in post-Apartheid South Africa: The case of Duncan Village and Bcmm, East London said, "For us it was an 'anti-removal struggle', we were supposed to be removed from this place in 1985; they made it worse in 1985. There was a call from the ANC abroad that we were following to render the country 'ungovernable', and apartheid 'unworkable' and we started with anti-removals because we were supposed to be moved to Mdantsane. We resisted but at a cost, we lost over 30 people and had massive funerals in 1985." During the 1990s and early 2000s, Duncan Village residents received houses in the Reeston area. This failed to combat the increasing number of shackdwellers from the surrounding rural areas.
Police were monitoring the meeting. As soon as the meeting ended, the police dispersed the crowd, the crowd retaliated. A battle between the residents and the police ensued. A white insurance salesman, Barend Vorster and an Irish nun, Elsie Quinlan, were killed in the unrest. Quinlan (also known as Sister Aidan) a medical doctor who had set up the St Peter Claver mission hospital in East London, was stoned to death and burnt beyond recognition. According to newspaper reports, there nine people died, including seven black Africans from Duncan Village, and 27 reported injured. However, records a certain D. Card, stating about 200 people were shot by the police. In his words, Card said: "Newspapers carried out that only nine people were shot, but from the removal of bodies we established that there were round about 200 people shot." No police were injured during the riots. Within 10 days, 150 Africans were arrested for pass offences. Fifteen were charged with the murder of Dr Quinlan, five convicted of murder and two hanged.
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