The University of Port Elizabeth (UPE) was a public university located in Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. UPE was founded on 31 January 1964, by an act of parliament, and held its first academic year in 1965. It offered bachelor's degrees, as well as masters and doctoral degrees. The university closed down in 2004, with its campuses forming part of the Nelson Mandela University, which opened in 2005..
The various segregationist policies adopted by administrations since colonial times have profoundly affected the distribution of the population in Port Elizabeth. An increasing degree of segregation became evident as a result of changing state and private programmes, until the city was transformed in the period from the 1950s to the 1970s from a colonial, 'segregation city' into the modern 'apartheid city'.
Private landownership was instituted at four mission stations of the London Missionary Society (LMS) in terms of Act 12 of 1873. This article sketches the traditional occupation of land and further examines the application of the said legislation to Bethelsdorp. It points out that private landownership in that community was also an exclusive process since many inhabitants still had to lease commonage. Thus the idealistic expectations of the LMS regarding ownership of land during the 1860s were not realized. For although alienation of land did in fact occur as a result of this Practice, there is no doubt that an awareness of the value of private landownership also developed.
Although the trek farmers were always on the move, a number of them were permanently settled in the present Oudtshoorn district by the end of the eighteenth century, the agricultural industry they founded promoting greater stability and a growing population. The traditional subsistence economy was converted into a market economy through the transport riding that sprang up between the Oudtshoorn district and the eastern and northern boundary districts. From 1811, when the magisterial district of George was established, and 1812 when a congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church took root there, the need for local administration and church authority increased. The first significant development in that direction was the erection in 1838 of the first church on Hartebeesrivier, a farm on the Grobbelaars River. This eventually became the centripetal force which led at the end of 1847 to the establishment of the town of Oudtshoorn on the farm Hartebeesrivier.
The economic development of the region east of the Hottentots-Holland Mountains (at that time the districts of Graaff-Reinet and Swellendam) could not be explored at first, because of the lack of local markets and the distance to Cape Town. To solve the problem the Dutch East India Company established harbour facilities at Mossel Bay in 1786 and two years later at Plettenberg Bay. This, however, did little if anything for the economic development of the southern Cape, mainly because residents were indifferent and not prepared to shoulder the costs involved in coastal shipping. After 1795 a few individuals, in partnership with the British authorities, took the initiative in promoting coastal shipping between Cape Town and the east coast, thereby linking the inhabitants and resources of that region to the Cape market. This reduced transport costs considerably, while also increasing the margins of profit.
