The sun is shining brightly at the beginning of the Southern Hemisphere winter. Yet, the water is freezing. Sherizma Adonis takes a deep breath. The 12-year-old girl plunges her head beneath the crystal-clear waves of False Bay. We are at Miller’s Point, on the eastern tip of the South African Cape Peninsula, in waters stirred by both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The sea leaks into Sherizma’s mask and snorkel, slipping down her neck beneath her poorly fitting wetsuit. But the schoolgirl doesn’t mind: she lets herself float peacefully, like three of her classmates, their hands resting on a buoy. Around them, the cries of seagulls and the roll of the waves, and beneath the surface, the « song » of the coral—a subtle crackling sound emanating from the vibrant reefs. Gradually, an incredible underwater forest emerges before the children’s fascinated eyes. Long kelp stalks sway in the ochre rays that pierce the surface. « I didn’t know there were trees under the sea! » marvels one of the girls, emerging from the water with a beaming smile. Orange or purple sea urchins, anemones, and iridescent shells cover the seabed. Shoals of silvery fish glide gracefully between the rocks. But when a striped pajama shark (Poroderma africanum) weaves between her legs, Sherizma snaps out of her enchantment and takes in some water.
A Vast Coastline Once Subjected to Segregation
The diving workshop that these children from disadvantaged coastal communities in the Cape region are participating in aims to familiarize them with the ocean over the course of two days. The association I Am Water, founded in 2010 by Hanli Prinsloo, a former South African freediving champion, is dedicated to repairing these young people’s relationship with the ocean. In this country beloved by surfers, the pleasures of swimming remain inaccessible to most residents: only 15% of South Africans can swim, according to the National Sea Rescue Institute, in a country with 2000 kilometers of coastline. This reality is partly inherited from the country’s painful history. Successive waves of colonization, followed by the racist apartheid regime (1948-1991), displaced many non-white coastal communities far from the ocean. Starting in the 1960s, beaches – like the rest of the public space – were subjected to a racial segregation system, with the best swimming spots reserved for the white minority and the more dangerous areas relegated to the rest of the population. Apartheid ended in 1991, yet… « There is still a transgenerational trauma, » analyzes anthropologist Rose Boswell, a specialist in oceanic cultures and heritage at Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth. « The experiences and suffering of the previous generation have partly been passed on to the next. »
Most of the primary school students from Downeville, like Sherizma Adonis, who are participating in the workshop, live in Manenberg, a township on the outskirts of Cape Town, about fifteen kilometers from the beaches frequented by tourists. The dry ground of their neighborhood contrasts with the white sand of Miller’s Point. During apartheid, Manenberg was designated as an exclusive residential area for people classified as “Coloured” – a category that included mixed-race individuals, descendants of Europeans and indigenous Khoi and San communities, as well as slaves from Southeast Asia. At the time, the coloured families, expelled from the multicultural neighborhoods of downtown and the coast, were forcibly relocated to grey apartment blocks and narrow houses hastily built to the east of Cape Town. This area, the Cape Flats, « was originally devoid of any infrastructure and regularly prone to flooding, » explains Rose Boswell.
