Swimming South Africa

Kamalinee Primary

Have just been beaten hands down by a bunch of eleven-year-olds. I'm pleased to say I managed to stay one arm length's in front of the eight-year-olds. But those bigger kids....
I was invited to Kamalinee Primary School on the outskirts of Durban - a short drive past the oil refinery in an area that's described as lower middle class Indian. It was strange to be greated by Deputy Head Sonia Singh - a fellow Punjabi by heritage - who spoke English with a strong Indian accent, but who had never been to India. Durban is home to South Africa's largest Indian community. Years of apartheid meant that instead of integrating into the local community, the Indians remained culturally separate and isolated. Hence the strong Indian accents. But this isn't the only legacy. White only beaches and swimming pools meant that historically, this is a community that can't swim.
But at Kamalinee, things are changing. First of all, it's no longer a segregated school. Kamalinee is the first school in the area to introduce Zulu into the curriculum and twenty per cent of it's pupils are now black. So far there are no white pupils, but the teachers hope this will change in time. I was impressed by the dedication of these teachers who work after hours and at the weekend for no pay to teach out of school clubs. The school is lucky to have a 25m outdoor pool and the swimming club is one of the most popular in the school. Every pupil can swim - some of them very well indeed. The kids practice after school and at the weekends thanks to the teachers who give up their free time to train them. Recently, they've been winning all the medals in the local galas.
Which brings me to those eleven-year-olds. OK, the pool is only 1m deep so I thought it better not to dive, so I guess they had a bit of an advantage. But I actually finished last. Still, I think I managed to leave with my pride intact. I overheard one kid saying to another "wasn't it nice that Miss swam slowly and let us win". Yes, wasn't it nice of me!

Durban swimming.

King's Park Pool in the centre of Durban is a world-class facility. There's a 50m indoor pool and a sizeable outdoor diving pool where swimmers can train all year round. When you see the pool full of swimmers of all colours charging up and down the lanes, the scene here looks a fantastic success. But the reality is more complicated.
In Durban, race still defines whether or not you have a chance to become a competitive swimmer. If you look closely at the different swimming clubs using the lanes, you can quickly see that racial integration isn't a present reality. At the top end there are fit, young white swimmers properly equipped with fins, floats, costumes, hats and goggles swimming hard and fast sets. Next to them are the brown swimmers - the Indians - also well-equipped ploughing up and down their lanes with Indian coaches instructing them from the poolside. Then there are the black swimmers. Speedos are replaced by long shorts and t-shirts, there aren't the pool buoys or fins used by the other groups and the swimmers themselves turn up late because they've had such trouble reaching the pool without the support of parents with cars.
Over a decade after the end of apartheid, I was suprised to see such a marked racial divide in the water. But the South Africans I spoke to told me I shouldn't be shocked at how little things had changed, but encouraged by how much they had. Fourteen years ago, there would have been no non-white swimmers in the pool. For them, the Indian and black swimming squads represented nothing short of a swimming revolution in South Africa. The fact that Indian and black swimmers now train and compete with whites, despite their lack of funding and equipment, shows how much the sport has opened up.

I met Musa, a black coach from a township outside Durban. His squad of ten swimmers from the age of six to sixteen was training in front of me. He told me that they were only able to afford one session a week at King's Park because of the cost of hiring a minibus to ferry them there. The swimmers were obviously enthusiatic, but apart from the front two setting the pace, the others seemed to roll and amble slowly through the water. It was a marked contrast from the slickly tumble-turning white squad in the next lane.
"How do you pick them," I asked, "do you have trials in the townships? Do you pick the best swimmers?".
"No," he replied, "I pick the ones who want to swim, the ones who love it."
For Musa's swimmers, it didn't matter that some of them could barely manage a length without stopping. They were still the first generation in their families to have the opportunity to compete in the water.

Day out with the Lazy Greys.

Well, I had to do it. Before leaving Cape Town, I booked myself on a cage diving experience with Great White Sharks. Or Lazy Greys - the name they used to be called here several decades ago. Somehow it sounds a lot less frightening.
Cage diving is a simple affair. There is no scuba involved, the boat just travels to the shark feeding grounds, drops anchor, puts out a bait and lowers a small cage over the side of the boat. Around five people at a time can get into the cage where they wait for the sharks to take the bait. We motored out to the area - near Seal Island on the Indian Ocean side of the Cape - in thick fog. As soon as we anchored, almost immediately, dorsal fins started appearing around us. The organisers say that sharks are constantly passing through the area and they're unlikely to see the same shark twice. But these sharks seemed to associate our boat with a good feed.
Tuna heads are used as the bait and they boat can only use a certain amount before they have to return. Getting into the cage was a little more worrying than I had thought. It's a pretty flimsy structure and the sharks are right there, an arm's length away, circling. You're given diving weights to help you stay a coule of metres under water at the bottom of the cage holding your breath. Then suddenly they lunge, powering through the water from below and gnashing at the bait. In the frenzy they smash against the cage, their teeth and dark eyes right in front of your face. It's an amazing thing to witness the power and beauty of a predator. And the adrenaline rush means you don't get all that cold waiting around. But I wonder whether we should be playing games with them.
Did it put me off swimming? Oddly enough no. I'm glad I've had a good look at who's in control in the water. But I hope I never have to see those great jaws shooting towards me without the cage for protection.

Leaving Cape Town.

Today, after a month in the city, I'm leaving Cape Town for the warmer waters of Durban. It's been an interesting few weeks, but very different to how I'd planned this trip. Whereas I thought I'd be mixing with swimmers from all communities, I've found a much more divided society. I've learnt that swimming here is still very much a segregated sport.
At one of the spectrum is Gary's Swim Squad and the Cape Long Distance Swimming Association. I've been swimming with Gary's squad for the past few weeks - dragging myself out of bed at 5am to throw myself into the luxuriously heated open air pool at a private boys school here. It's a fantastic squad and I feel priviledged to train with them. Excluding me, they can count among them 18 Robben Island crossings and several Channel swims. They're dedicated, enthusiastic and encouraging and I'm sure if there were good black swimmers who wanted to join them, they would be very welcome.
The same goes with the Long Distance Association which organises the long-distance swims around Cape Town. It's a very friendly bunch of people all crazy about being in the open ocean - again welcoming to all that are interested.

But the problem facing promising young black swimmers in Cape Town is an economic one. Most black children live in townships outside the main city, without reliable public transport to get them to and from training. For most of them, swimming in the heated pool in one of Cape Town's most affluent areas would be as alien to them as visiting London to swim. How would they afford the class fees, the necessary costume, googles and other props needed to train? How would they be able to enter this world without economic and social support behind them?

There are a couple of pools actually in the townships and this is where promising black swimmers are currently training. But these become overcrowded very quickly. I visited one pool in Khayelitsha - a sprawling shanty town of tin huts and dirt roads half an hour outside Cape Town that houses a million and half black South Africans. Here the guards told me it wasn't uncommon to get crowds of over 3,000 kids in the summer. They've tried closing the gates, but the children just jump over them to get into the water. This has lead to several accidents and drownings which in turn has had an effect on swimming education in schools.
I met the principle of Luleka Primary School in Khayelitsha - Abraham Sonti. Abraham told me that he'd like to get all of his 1,381 students into the pool at least once a week. But after several children drowned, he now had to permission from every parent before taking the pupils to the pool. Many parents can't read or write themselves and these letters often go unanswered. Abraham felt he wasn't able to get past the red tape and because of this, most of his students still don't know how to swim.

But there is hope for young swimmers. The South African government gives money to swimming projects and is funding a national Learn to Swim programme. I saw the most promising results of this project in the coloured community in Cape Town. I met swimming teaching Ray Beste who teaches coloured children in a small, indoor pool at the back of her house. She likes to get them in the water young, before they're one, so they can get a feel for the water. With government funding, she buses in local school children and, in the summer, even travels to rural communities to teach there. But she believes until Cape Town builds more indoor swimming pools that can be used all year round, many children still wont get the opportunity to learn.

The Robben Island to Cape Town Swim.

Saturday morning and the swim was on. The rain had stopped and weak sunlight was hitting the houses outside my window. My boatwoman Mariza called. "I haven't heard from the organisers, but I we're getting ready", she said. When I hung up, a text message came through. "All systems go."

At the marina, I met up with Mariza and her crew - her husband, her young daughter and daughter's friend. They were deep in discussion with Gary about feeding plans. We'd decided to feed on each half hour and handed over bottles of sports drinks and bananas to the girls. Mariza tied our swimmer numbers to the side of the boat so that race officials could recognise us. Gary then told me a friend of his was also going to swim with us. Jared, like Gary, had come down from Johannesburg for the event. Like Gary, he was extremely fit - an Iron Man competitor. But neither man had had the opportunity to train in cold water. This race was going to be tough for them.

On to the dockside where all swimmers were handed one-way ferry tickets to Robben Island. We're not the first to be given these, I thought. As we boarded the boat, there was a sense of carnival. The 7.2km Robben Island to Cape Town race has become a major event for South African long-distance swimmers and over sixty competitors were taking part this year. I met one man who'd swum the Channel (around 30km) in eight hours. These people were serious athletes.

The sun shone but it was cold. I had decided to wear flipflops and a thin top - my reasoning being that I might have hardened to the cold by the time I got in the water. Rumours of water temperature spread through the group. I heard everything from a very chilly 11C to an almost Mediterranean 16C. In fact, it was 13C - the coldest temperature at which the race could take place. A couple of years ago, swimmers competed in temperatures of 10C leading to several cases of severe hypothermia.

I was in heat two - the heat for the slower swimmers and relay teams. Gary and Jared both assured me that they were happy to swim at my pace, though I felt bad at holding them back. As we waited at Robben Island we looked at pictures of formers prisoners in the souvenir shop. Another swimmer told me that she'd heard three prisoners had tried to escape by swimming to the mainland. One was eaten by a shark, one reached the other side but was trampled by an elephant and one made it. I really wished she hadn't brought up the subject of sharks.

The rules of the race are that the swimmer can wear only one hat, a pair of goggles and one swimming costume. No wetsuits are allowed. Nor is it a good idea to use Channel swimming grease - it contains lanolin which tastes good to Great Whites. But you can use vaseline to prevent your costume rubbing in the salt water. It must have been a strange sight to see a load of swimmers smearing vaseline onto each other before the race began.
And then it was time to start. Many people adopted a sprinting-into-the-water style racing start, but I ambled in slowly repeating "lovely warm water" over and over to myself. Gary and Jared followed my pace. Looking back I wish I had started a bit more quickly because we immediately became the last competitors in the race. But at least my body didn't get a shock from the cold.

In fact, although 13C is very cold, my mind games had worked. It actually felt quite warm. I began stroking at a comfortable rhythm, negotiating my way through underwater kelp forests. The sun was on my back and it felt great. Twenty minutes into the race and I began to notice white, floating shapes beneath me. Jelly fish. I adjusted my stroke to be on jelly fish alert - looking around me underwater as much as I could. The girls on the boat started pointing out the big ones for us. Then one of the girls took up position at the back of the boat to point out things that could be sharks. This was a sensible and helpful thing to do, but it's funny how you perceive things when you're in the water. As I turned my head to breathe, I'd scrutinise the faces of my boat crew for any signs of anxiety or potential threat. The face of the shark hunting girl was beginning to scare me. Mariza picked up on this quickly and asked her to stop.

Squelch. My hand hit something soft and slimey in the water. I had slammed into a jelly fish. I waited for the pain of the sting, but nothing happened. Brilliant! These were non-stinging jellies. I relaxed and kept to my rhythm. Gary swam on one side of me and Jared on the other. I could tell that we were going much slower than Gary's normal pace but Jared and I seemed quite well matched. I felt strong, warm and secure. How easy, I thought.

Everyone tells me that long-distance swimming is a sport of the mind. Whether you succeed or fail has more to do with your mental endurance than your physical fitness. Some swimmers work out problems when they swim, some fantasize and some sing to themselves. It doesn't matter what you do as long as you don't loose your nerve. I'd like to say I come up with solutions to difficult and important issues, but in fact when I swim I have the mind of a gold fish. My thoughts are as complicated as "look at Mariza on the boat, green water, breathe out, look Mariza again, green water, breathe out....." Every now and again "shark!!!" manages to squeeze it's way in there, but luckily I forget about it quickly. A rhyme that someone had told me kept creeping into my mind. "How do you swim to Jo'burg? One stroke at a time." Stupid rhyme, I kept thinking, Jo'burg is landlocked. But it matched my stroke pace and seemed to work.

We stopped for our first feed and then Gary suggested we sprint for a while to warm up. It was the first time I noticed that the boys were cold. I still felt we were swimming in warm water. My intense chocolate training had worked! I had managed to lay down enough fat to insulate myself. Gary was shivering but still strong in the water. Jared, who had virtually no body fat, was beginning to lag behind.
Mariza kept our second stop to a couple of minutes. She didn't tell us but the race officials had told her unless we reached the half-way mark by a certain time, we'd be disqualified. We made it with 16 minutes to spare and stopped to celebrate with another drink. Then all of a sudden, everything changed. The sky and sea became cold and grey and a huge swell rose out of nowhere. I looked at Mariza. "It will wash through, keep swimming'", she said. But my earlier confidence started to leave me.

The swell increased. Gary struck out ahead and I kept close to the boat. I was beginning to worry about Jared who was now some five metres behind me. I noticed other boats in the area, including a big rescue boat. When you're cold and at water level, logical thinking is difficult. I thought the boats were responsible for the choppy water and I wanted to shout at them to get lost. Later, the skipper of the rescue boat told me he was trying to put himself between us and the wind to protect us from the increasingly large waves. I've always heard people say conditions at sea can change in an instant. It was first time I'd experienced it for myself.

The swimming was no longer easy. My left shoulder started to ache, then my left knee. I began to feel the cold. Our cosy formation of three swimmers in a row had completely disintegrated. Gary was ahead and to the left of me. In the swell I kept losing sight of him. I couldn't see Jared at all.
We stopped for another feed. Jared was behaving oddly. After sipping his drink he sank under the water, came up and then sank again. He did this several times. "Swim next to me", I said to him, but his eyes didn't register my presence. He was beginning to show symptoms of hypothermia. I looked at Mariza. "Don't worry about him, keep swimming your race," she said. We set off again and I kept as close the boat as I could. In the distance I could see land, but it didn't seem to be getting any nearer. A new thought popped into my mind. "I don't like this and I want to get out". I looked at Mariza. "I'm worried about sharks", I said. "No sharks, don't worry, we'll look after you. Just keeping swimming."
The shore still wasn't getting any closer and the cold was beginning to bite. I could no longer close my fingers to pull through the water. My hands had turned into claws and had lost their efficiency. I began to swim by rolling my hips from side to side to propel me forwards. My shoulder and knee smarted with pain. Suddenly I noticed that one of the organisers, Peter Bales, had manoevered his rubber dinghy next to Mariza. They chatted for a while. "We're going to change direction", she said to me. We had been trying to swim directly to the finish line, but the current and the winds had been blowing us down the coast. It was the reason we hadn't made any progress for the last half hour. Peter had allowed us to swim with the current and land wherever it took us.

We started off again and it finally seemed like we were moving forward. But I was concerned. I noticed Mariza was talking a lot on the radio and she kept looking behind the boat. What was it? What had she seen? Had something happened to Jared? I kept swimming. We were now only one kilometre from the shore. Gary was ten metres ahead of me with Peter's boat next to him. Later he told me that Peter had said to him - either you sprint to the shore or you wont make it. The cold had worn him down and he didn't have much energy left.
But what of Jared? Mariza was still looking behind her. Finally I stopped to ask. "He's been taken out", she told me. "He was becoming disorientated and confused and he couldn't keep up. But you keep swimming, you're doing so well." I stroked ahead thinking of how disappointed Jared must be. This was the second time he'd attempted and failed to finish the race. To have to give up one kilometre from the shore must be hard to accept.

And then I realised I was going to make it. As the swell rose and fell, I could catch glimpses of the beach less than 200 metres away. The water colour changed to light green and I knew I was getting close to the surf line. Suddenly I was overcome with the urge to cry. Stop that, I thought and another more worrying thought crept into my mind. Waves. If you've grown up by the sea, knowing how to deal with waves is probably nothing to you. But I grew in the quiet countryside by the River Thames and only had my first encounter with massive surf a few years ago in Australia. I made the mistake of turning my back on a wave that broke over the top of me and I've never forgotten what it was like to be churned and smashed against the sea bed.

"You'll stay with me", I pleaded to Mariza. "We can only go this far, you'll have to swim in alone," came the reply. Ahead of me I could see white water and massive breakers. And something else too - a dark shape in the water. "Is that a surfer," I asked Mariza. "No a seal, keep swimming." Later the guys on the rescue boat told me how they hoped I hadn't seen its flippers and thought it was a shark. But by that point, a shark was preferable to what I could see in front of me.

I left Mariza and kept swimming. Peter Bales moved his dinghy up towards me. "Hardly any waves, Jo, just keep swimming." But the waves were huge. Only 30 metres to go. OK, I'll keep swimming I thought and then suddenly a wave swept me up and smashed over the top of me. In the white water my goggle straps were torn off the back of my head and I almost lost them and my cap. What was going on? I couldn't work out why the waves were breaking so far offshore. Afterwards I found out that there were reefs and sandbanks stretching out into the deep water which means waves can break several times before reaching the beach. Mariza described it as a dangerous dumping ground where the surf was so strong people don't swim. I looked behind me and could see another massive wave bearing down on me. I tried to swim through it but was dumped again. I knew if I kept swimming the waves would slam me against the sea bed. By this point I had been in the water for almost three and a half hours. I was exhausted, cold and frightened. I could see a small rescue boat in the distance tossing and turning in the surf. I waved "help, help me, please help me". But they didn't hear. As the next wave broke over me, I had to think of another plan.

Then I remembered that waves often come in groups and then stop for while. I was in the middle of a big group now, but if I found a place to wait it out safely, surely they would die down? And only a few seconds after thinking this, that's exactly what happened. The sea seemed to relax around me and the waves disappeared. "Swim for it", mind my mind yelled and I put my head down and pelted the last ten metres to the shore. I could see sand clearly beneath me. Before the next wave had a chance to break, I stood up and struggled onto the beach. I had done it. I had swum from Robben Island to Cape Town.

Gary was waiting for me wrapped in a blanket. Medics quickly wrapped me in one as I started to shiver violently. "What about that surf," he said, "I lost my goggles." It had taken him 3 hours 20 minutes to finish the race and I had come in six minutes behind him. We waited for Jared to appear through the surf before I remember that he'd been taken out of the water. The medics escorted us to a waiting ambulance, offering to carry me up the hill to the road (it was tempting, but I felt I should walk it.) As we drove back up to the official finish line Gary said it was the toughest swim he'd ever had, tougher than the English Channel.

It's Sunday now and I feel like a truck's hit me - I'm sore all over. Gary's gone back to Jo'burg, but rang to say that Jared is fine and is recovering well. Last night there was a prize giving ceremony and dinner to celebrate. The fastest swimmer, Tyrone Venter, completed the race in an amazing one and half hours! Natalie du Toit, an amazing swimmer who lost a leg in a road accident, took the woman's prize for the sixth year running. I'm not sure, but I think I may have been the slowest competitor. It doesn't matter though. I did it.

(For more pictures, click on the photo album link on the left hand side of this page.)

The Angry Seas.

I lay in bed last night listening to the rain and the surf pounding the sea front. Between snatches of sleep I thought, please don't make me swim in this. And sure enough, this morning the organisers contacted us to say the swim's been postponed until tomorrow morning.

Last night I went out with some of the organisers and met Gary the Channel swimmer. They told me how they'd recently gone to Australia to swim between Perth and Rottnest Island - a 21km annual swim competition. The race was called off because of bad weather and high seas, but they snuck past security and swam it anyway. I'm beginning to see that a maverick approach to problems is a bit of South African characteristic. After dinner we all stood on the sea front watching huges waves crash into the sea wall. "It's nothing - just a bit of chop!" they said and I thought, oh my god, am I in the company of mad people?

But luckily my boatwoman Mariza seems sensible. She rang me this morning to say she wouldn't take me out in this weather, whatever the organisers said. I like that. She makes me feel calm and protected. She doesn't seem like the sort of woman who likes taking risks.

The sea will still be choppy tomorrow - the weather report is predicting three metre swells - but we'll probably swim anyway. I feel more mentally prepared having gone through the dry run of getting ready this morning. And one aspect of training is going extremely well. My chocolate consumption is at maximum performance. I'm beginning to resemble a seal.

It's raining.

It's chucking it down here. The first rain I've seen since arriving two and a half weeks ago. A cold front is passing through which, apparently, is good news for water temperature (it may even go up to 15C!!). But it's bad news for visibility and swimming conditions. The sea is looking quite choppy today with a big swell rolling in. So we're all waiting to find out whether the swim will be postponed until Saturday.

I met my boat woman last night, Mariza. I liked her immediately - calm, strong, knows what she's doing and good with nervous swimmers. She's bringing her husband along to look out for sharks for me. The swim organisers have also managed to secure a chopper to do a couple of shark spotting runs while we're in the water. I've also been told I'll be swimming with Gary Austin - apparently quite a famous long-distance swimmer here. He's been training to swim the Channel double, which means going from England to France, turning round and swimming right back again. I fear I could slow him down, but apparently he's an easy-going chap who wont mind.

The top five swimmers in the race will be tagged by GPS devices so you can track their performance by clicking here and following the instructions.

Wish me luck!

Two days til the swim.

It's just two days left before the 7.2km Vista Nova Robben Island to Cape Town swim and I'm resting. The weather is good for the moment, though storms are predicted for tomorrow. After a practice swim on Sunday when water temperature was a lovely 14C, we're hoping for the same on Friday. If conditions do get stormy, we may have to postpone the swim until Saturday.
I've been doing a bit of last minute training at Newlands open air pool with trainer Gary - inventor of Gary's Finger Fins, a handy little device that you fit on your fingers to help correct your stroke. It's a 5am start to get there, but worth it to see the sun rise reflected on Table Mountain as I trawl up and down.
Otherwise, I've decided the approach to take with sharks is that information conquers fear. So I bought a book and learnt the following fascinating Great White facts:
- they have blue eyes
- female Great Whites are bigger than males
- they can reach speeds of up to 50km an hour
- they don't seem to like the taste of humans
- they can be playful
- it's best not to pee in the water as this attracts them.

Armed with this knowledge, I'm sure I'll be much happier in the middle of the ocean!

I'm off to meet my boat pilot tonight.

Gary's Surf School

The sun is shining, the daytime temperature is a wonderful 28C, but officially it's winter here. So finding outdoor swimming lessons is proving quite hard. But a fellow swimmer pointed me in the direction of Gary's Surf School. On the beach front at Muizenberg, in False Bay, it's been teaching disadvantaged black kids to surf for over five years. Read all about it here.

Gary's philosophy is that if you teach surfing and life skills, you're giving any kid an opportunity to be successful in the new South Africa. And he has many pupils to prove it. Kwezi Quika, a seventeen year old who surfs with him, is leaving this week for an International Longboard Championship in France. And I met eighteen-year-old Alfonso Peters who recently won the Western Province surfing trials and is about to compete in National Championships.

When he was younger, Gary himself competed at a national level. But coming from a poor background, he found it difficult to afford to travel around the country to take part in events. This made him angry, and this anger stayed with him when in later life he began to coach. He noticed black kids on the beach taking an interest in his lessons and so he decided to include these kids in his sessions and provide them with the opportunities he'd missed out on. in particular he wanted to disprove the myth that black kids can't swim.

Gary takes kids in from orphanages and teaches them not only to surf, but basic life skills as well. They learn to use computers, faxes, phones and electronic banking. He also teaches them how to dress and how to deal with people in business - basic information they're not exposed to in townships. He hopes that through this they'll be able to find work in the surf industry - either running their own school or selling surfing products. But it hasn't been an easy ride. Some kids steal and use the money to buy drugs. Some use surfing as an excuse to drop out of school.

Alfonso should have been in school when I met him, but said he couldn't afford the bus fare there. He doesn't get much support from his family, who are scared that he spends so much time in the water. "But that's because they don't know how good I am", he tells me. Surfing has given him role models, both black and white, he says. His ambition is to compete internationally and then open his own surf school.

Learn to Swim

It's taken a lot more organising that I thought, but last night I had my first swimming lesson with black and coloured children in Cape Town. I joined a teacher called Karin November at the Learn to Swim programme at the University of Western Cape.

The University, built in the 1960s for black and coloured students, applied for a grant to put a roof on an open air pool and set up a community learn to swim programme some fifteen years ago. Karin said for many of the kids there, these lessons represented their first contact with water. She told me how you could see the fear in their faces when they first go underwater, but how this soon changes to confidence.

And I could really sense this confidence and energy in the atmosphere. There were children of all ages and ability - some learning to dive from an improvised kitchen table, some with kickboards and flippers, and even young Muslim girls in full-length suits. All colours were there, and it looked like a lot of fun. Karin told me that as well as teaching swimming, the programme is also a social hub for local communities where children can make new friends and get out of the sheltered environment of townships.

But I am surprised at how segregated South African swimming still is. Karin, who is coloured, said she didn't learn to swim until she was nineteen because swimming used to be a white-only sport. Things have certainly improved, but it's still not totally mixed. There were white swimmers last night, but Karin told me many were foreign exchange students. The university is trying to attract elite white swimmers. But so far, only one has joined.