List of Famous people born in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Sipho Mandla Agmatir Thwala is a South African rapist and serial killer who was convicted in 1999 for the murders of 16 women and 10 rapes. He was sentenced to 506 years in prison. Thwala was known by the moniker "The Phoenix Strangler".

Noloyiso Sandile was a South African royal.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is a South African politician and United Nations official, and is currently serving as the Executive Director of UN Women with the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Navanethem "Navi" Pillay is a South African jurist who served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. A South African of Indian Tamil origin, she was the first non-white woman judge of the High Court of South Africa, and she has also served as a judge of the International Criminal Court and President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Her four-year term as High Commissioner for Human Rights began on 1 September 2008 and was extended an additional two years in 2012. She was succeeded in September 2014 by Prince Zeid bin Ra'ad. In April 2015 Pillay became the 16th Commissioner of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty. She is also one of the 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders.

Phillip Vallentine Tobias was a South African palaeoanthropologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He was best known for his work at South Africa's hominid fossil sites. He was also an activist for the eradication of apartheid and gave numerous anti-apartheid speeches at protest rallies and also to academic audiences.

Njabulo Ricardo Mthembu was a South African politician. He was a member of the African National Congress and a representative of the party in the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature from 2019 to 2020. Mthembu served on the legislature's Portfolio Committee on Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. Between 2011 and 2019, he served as the Executive Mayor of the KwaDukuza Local Municipality.

Heather Ford is a South African researcher, blogger, journalist, social entrepreneur and open source activist who has worked in the field of Internet policy, law and management in South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. She is the founder of Creative Commons South Africa. She has studied the nature of power within Wikipedia and is a researcher at the University of Leeds.

Harry Austin Kitson was a male tennis player from South Africa who won a gold medal at the men's doubles event at the 1912 Summer Olympics.

Kerry-Lee Harrington is a South African badminton player. She won a bronze medal, along with her partner Stacy Doubell, in the women's doubles at the 2007 All-Africa Games in Algiers, Algeria. Harrington represented South Africa at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where she competed in the women's singles. She received a bye for the second preliminary round match, before losing out to Malaysia's Wong Mew Choo, with a score of 4–21 each in two straight periods.