School is out and the sun is blazing in Soweto, but 12-year-old Phumlane Kubheka has serious work to do.
Glancing around nervously, he grips the blue float in both hands, takes a deep breath and plunges his head into the water.
Kubheka is learning to swim. He hopes to become the first member of his family and one of the only boys in his neighbourhood able to safely splash around in the deep end.
”I was nervous at first but now it feels good,” he said, shivering after his second lesson in the glittering blue pool in Soweto, South Africa’s biggest township.
Despite a string of Olympic swimmers and about 2Â 000km of stunning coastline, just 15% of South Africans can swim — and most of them are white.
During apartheid, white children would spend school holidays playing in the private pools that are virtually a fixture of middle-class suburban homes.
Meanwhile, few black children had even seen a swimming pool due to poor facilities in former black-only schools and neighbourhoods.
”We were told black people would not make good swimmers when we grew up,” said Mandla Mdlalose, regional manager for sport and recreation in the Soweto area.
The legacy lives on, with up to three children drowning every day in South Africa’s lakes, dams, oceans and private pools. Almost all of them are black.
”Most black people simply cannot swim,” Easlyn Young, manager of South Africa’s Learn to Swim programme, told Reuters.
Olympic irony
South Africa’s drowning statistics are even more painful given the success of swimmers like Olympic medallists Penny Heyns, Ryk Neethling and Roland Schoeman, who have flourished since South Africa re-entered the sporting arena after apartheid fell, ending an international boycott.
”It is ironic that you have Olympic champions when there are so many people drowning,” said Schoeman, who visited the pool in Soweto to offer a few tips to the children.
”South Africa’s children — white, black, coloured, need to learn to be water-safe.”
The government-backed Learn to Swim campaign aims to teach 50Â 000 children to swim over the long southern hemisphere summer holidays, focusing on poor townships and rural areas.
But Young said the programme also needed to raise awareness among the burgeoning black middle class, many of whom cannot swim but are increasingly moving into houses and apartment blocks with their own pools.
”More and more of our people are able to buy homes with pools but parents can’t swim and because of ignorance, they are not vigilant,” said Young, noting hundreds of children drown at home just because parents are unable to rescue them.
In Gauteng — South Africa’s economic powerhouse that includes Johannesburg and Pretoria — emergency services have rushed to 17 drownings or near drownings in December alone, most involving small children at private swimming pools.
Mdlalose said the Learn to Swim programme was also aimed at nurturing black talent and producing black champions to compete with Neethling and Schoeman — both of whom are white.
”Our children need to … understand they can be friends with water and water can be friends with them,” said Mdlalose. ”We want to unearth future champions and Olympians.” — Reuters