In the coastal community of Mpume, located near the Dwesa-Cwebe nature reserve in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, the aftermath of apartheid after 30 years of democracy crystallizes in those who have access to the sea. While white tourists can fish, go boating, snorkeling or canoeing, the black communities of the Xhosa ethnic group – indigenous to the region – are restricted from entering the reserve, fishing, and collecting firewood and other products for their subsistence. If they exceed the imposed limits, they face fines, arrests, and even being shot at. Although on paper the communities are the owners of the land and have their customary rights guaranteed, in practice, they cannot inhabit it or live from it. Their decisions about the reserve are rarely respected and even less often do they receive the money that the State or the white community gets from tourism exploitation. The management of the sea and nature conservation is still anchored in those colonial and racist ideas that led to the establishment of the apartheid system in South Africa.

Text: Daniel Wizenbert
Photography: Berta Vicente

The latest Freedom Day, which is celebrated every April 27th in South Africa, marked the 30th anniversary of Mandela’s victory in the elections and the end of apartheid. But in this small town called Mpume there were no special celebrations and the day passed as if it were not a holiday. Bekiswa Zikeyi, Noxolo Gingxana and Noliviwe Mantanjana – aged 31, 40 and 55 – lived it as if it were just another day to collect shellfish.

Every day, it takes these women 3 hours to get from their home to Dwesa beach: a huge black rocky esplanade on the eastern cape of the South African coast near East London. They carry with them a rusty iron bar, a plastic bucket that was once “Vanilla Ice Cream, 2.8 kg” and two empty 3-liter jerry cans of water.

They use the rusty iron bar to pry the mussels from their rocky substrate and place them in the bucket. The drums are filled with seawater to ward off evil spirits and summon their ancestors for luck.

If the mussels resist and harvesting takes longer than expected, a wave covers their work space. They do not get frustrated, they do not stand in place waiting for the water to recede, but escape the waves with laughter, splashing around like little girls who have just learned about the ocean, as if their survival did not depend on the success of this ancestral ritual.

In this area, the sea holds 2.000 species of mollusks, such as the Texan snail, Krauss’ nasarium, the tiger nautica, the African tulip, the tessellated nerite, the spotted trochophore, the painted limpet, the serra razorfish, the ensis leei, the leguminous lighthouse, the elegant conch, the bedoti tellina, the hairy crab, the cucullata oyster, the galea tonna, the athleta michelottianus, and the athleta michelottianus, the tellina bedoti, the hairy crab, the cucullata oyster, the tonna galea, the athleta michelottianus and the abalone, the white gold, the most coveted mollusk, the most desired by haute cuisine restaurants all over the world.

After 2 hours, Bekiswa, Noxolo and Noliviwe have collected 112 mollusks. Before leaving, they refill the saltwater bottles to take home. Some is for cooking and some to use against spirits, they say. That’s 6 liters of remote access to the sea.

Every day, it takes these women 3 hours to get from their home to Dwesa beach to collect mollusks, one of their few sources of food.

They arrive on time at the exit gate. It is 5:59 p.m. and at 6:00 p.m. the visiting hours of the Dwesa-Cwebe nature reserve end. If they arrived minutes later they could be reported to the police or shot.

Ntombovuyo, a 22-year-old park ranger who lives in Cwebe, the community across the road from Dwesa, searches the collectors at the fence. One by one she pulls the mussels out of the boat as she counts them. When she reaches fifty, she tells them, “Okay, this is the limit. The rest you can’t take”.

The ancestors of these women lived on these huge shores. They were the first generation that never slept here: in 1975 the same government that implemented apartheid moved them inland to create a nature reserve. Throughout South Africa, black and mixed-race people of the same ethnicity were displaced and grouped into bantustans: areas where black people were forced to live, separated from white urban areas. Some of these areas were independent “homelands”, such as the one in this region, called Transkei, to group the Xhosa ethnic group. In general, access to the sea was reserved for whites.

In 1994, apartheid ended, but these communities were not allowed to return, arguing that nature is better preserved in spaces uninhabited by humans.

In 1994, apartheid ended, but these communities were not allowed to return, arguing that nature is better preserved in spaces uninhabited by humans.

The native fishing communities of the Dwesa-Cwebe reserve subsist on what the sea offers them. © Berta Vicente / RUIDO Photo

David, a 62-year-old fisherman, leaves his home once a week with his rod over his shoulder and sets out on the 5-kilometer walk from his village, Hobeni, to the sea. A dusty, bumpy road leads him to the Heaven Hotel on Cwebe Beach.

At the hotel, tourists – who can only get here if they have a 4×4 – are offered an experience that “allows them to forget the rest of the world and relax in a secluded, unspoiled environment,” says Susan Millar, part of the British-accented family that took over the resort. Susan prefers to be called Su.

For 80 years, the Heaven has had 25 spacious cabins with high thatched roofs that simulate those of fishermen. These huts remain scattered in a garden overlooking the sea where monkeys, cows, and horses roam. “Don’t say that we are the owners of all this; it’s the community.” But in the community they don’t know where the rent money goes and Su doesn’t show proof of payment.

Tourists can fish all they want and, in addition to hiking, mountain biking, swimming in the small pool and bird watching, they can also go canoeing, tennis, golf, whale and dolphin watching, snorkeling and 4×4. The hotel is full board and both on holiday weekends and during the summer it remains full of white and blond tourists with rugby bodies speaking Afrikaans.

David arrives at the reception desk and speaks in Xhosa to the receptionist. It is a language full of clicks: some lateral -like imitating the trot of a horse-, some alveolar -like imitating the uncorking of a wine- and some dental -like the “tsk tsk” to express disapproval.

For 80 years, The Haven has had 25 spacious cabins with high thatched roofs that simulate those of fishermen. Tourists can fish as much as they want and also practice canoeing, tennis, golf, whale and dolphin watching, snorkeling and 4×4.

David buys a Chinese brand hook that is advertised as “the difference between fishing and catching fish,” and continues his way to the confluence of the Mbashe River and the sea. Once there, as he dips his feet into the sandy bed, he feels the wind blowing towards the mainland, as if the sea flows into the river, not the other way around. He believes that this current will favor him. It begins to get dark.  “The moon should be seen by now, it’s good that, we fishermen have a mantra: ‘when the moon goes down, the fish come; if the moon is seen, the fish go,'” David says. But the fish don’t come.

David decides it’s time for a change of scenery and see what’s going on out at sea. He walks 300 meters and settles on the saltwater shoreline. He prepares the bait again, holding the rod in his right hand and resting it on his navel. Another hour passes in silence, until the rod tightens. David strains against dropping it, arching his waist back. “Something big has bitten!” he shouts, as a fat, agonizing cod emerges from the waves. “It must weigh about 20 pounds,” he says excitedly. David picks it up and lets it finish dying on the sand. The fisherman gets excited and doesn’t want to waste time: he throws the line back into the sea; but he is tired, instead of standing and waiting, he inserts the rod into a piece of PVC pipe stuck in the sand. He sits on a dry log and lights a cigarette.

The sun is definitely going down. “Tonight is ideal for fishing,” he says. “It’s a perfect, perfect, perfect time.” But he lowers his gaze and darkens after glancing at the clock. “The reserve has already closed. This is illegal. I’ve already been taken to jail twice and imposed unpayable fines,” he says, and begins to put his things away. Once David was detained for three days and another time for four. The fines are about $300: more than he earns in a year selling fish to the Millar family.

David will not eat the cod. He stops by the hotel to sell the fish and sets out on foot to walk the 5 kilometers in total darkness to his home. With the 30 rand he is paid for the fish, he ensures that his children have everything they need to go to school. With what is left over he buys some canned food at the grocery store.

In 1999, David got tired and went to Johannesburg to stone-pick. “In our village, then, as now, there was nothing to live on,” he says. Near the country’s economic capital he found employment in a gold mine and worked inside the mountain for years. But he missed the sea, so he returned determined to fight for change. It was then that, together with other fishermen, he sued the Dwesa-Cwebe nature reserve in the national courts.

In 2012 a judge ruled in favor of David and the communities, setting a significant precedent. Since then, South Africa has recognized the customary right to land claims, although in this case it was applied in an odd way. The seven communities that used to inhabit the coast were granted the right to own the nature reserve, but not the right to inhabit it. The communities can charge rent to businesses operating in the area, such as the Haven Hotel and the owner-occupied villa complexes, but are prohibited from sleeping on their land.

In 2012 a judge ruled in favor of David and the communities, setting a significant precedent. Since then, the customary right to land claim has been recognized in South Africa, although its application has been limited.

South Africa is not experiencing a security crisis or armed conflict, but it does have three central problems: inequality, unemployment and poverty – from which others stem – all of which are rooted in racism.

Apartheid was a structure of racial segregation and political control to consolidate an economic system that benefited the white minority at the expense of the black majority. In 1994, white political control ended, but the socioeconomic system was not completely dismantled.

This is a rainbow nation, said Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the early post-apartheid era. The term symbolizes hope and diversity, but that rainbow has stronger colors than others: according to the Gini coefficient, South Africa is the most unequal country on the planet.

The unemployment rate is among the highest in the world, and it affects the younger strata of the population the most. It can be seen in any rural community, such as Dwesa-Cwebe, or in any suburban township. The World Bank data says it all: 6 out of 10 South Africans are poor and none of those 6 are white.

Apartheid was established in 1948 when the National Party, a racist conformation of the Boer minority descended from Afrikaner migrants, won the elections in South Africa. In 1910, after pacifying the region, Great Britain had established the Union of South Africa, expropriating land from the Africans, some of whom founded the ANC in 1912. By the 1930s, blacks could no longer vote alongside whites.

During the 1950s, in the midst of the Cold War, South Africa allied with the USA, Great Britain and Israel to fight the “communist threat”, supporting colonial regimes and repressing liberation movements. The outlawing of communism in 1950 did not stop the protests, which grew in the 1960s: in the Sharpeville massacre (1960) the police killed 69 demonstrators. This led to the outlawing of the ANC, which went underground with its armed wing, uMkhonto We Sizwe.

In 1976 the Soweto revolt against the imposition of Afrikaans as the school language resulted in the deaths of between 23 and 700 students, depending on the source . This event internationalized the condemnation of apartheid. South Africa was expelled from the Commonwealth, FIFA and the Olympic Committee, and economic boycotts and arms embargoes were imposed.

In the 1980s violence increased, and South Africa defended itself by maintaining an anti-communist stance, supporting groups opposed to liberation movements in neighboring countries. The illegal occupation of Namibia also raised international condemnation.

At the end of the decade, under internal and external pressure, South Africa began to change. President Frederik De Klerk took office in 1989 with the intention of ending segregation, releasing Nelson Mandela in 1990 after 27 years in prison. In 1992, a referendum showed strong support for apartheid reform.

The transition to democracy cost 14,000 lives and injured more than 20,000 people. In 1994 Mandela was elected president in the country’s first democratic elections. Apartheid ended and the era we are still living in began.

South Africa is not experiencing a security crisis or armed conflict, but it does have three central problems: inequality, unemployment and poverty – from which others stem – all of which are rooted in racism.

South Africa’s rural communities remain majority black and poor, with high unemployment forcing people to migrate. ©Berta Vicente / RUIDO Photo.

Sibongiseni is 28 years old and works for Masifundise, one of the leading organizations advocating for fishermen’s rights in South Africa. In elementary school she was one of four black people in her grade. She traveled 4 hours each way between her home on the outskirts of Cape Town and an all-white school. He speaks Afrikaans with a white accent. “In that context you have to assimilate to progress, but I have no white friends,” he says.

-As a lawyer, how do you support the communities?

We helped them with the main underlying problem in Dwesa-Cwebe, which is the non-enforcement of customary rights, the ineffective implementation of the small-scale fishing policy and the lack of recognition that the community is the rightful owner of the land on which the Dwesa-Cwebe Reserve is located according to their 2001 land restitution claim. Many of the challenges, such as violence and harassment, arise from the lack of respect for the cultural and traditional way of life of the Dwesa-Cwebe communities. The State has failed to provide mechanisms that protect and preserve Dwesa-Cwebe customary rights. The State has created inadequate regulations that are bureaucratic and formalistic and simply do not conform to the customary rights of these communities. There is also a lack of consultation regarding the management of the reserve, which creates a great deal of conflict between the government and the local community. The State’s top-down approach has left Dwesa-Cwebe’s customary rights powerless.

-Have you met with the authorities recently? What happened?

-On May 3, we had a meeting with the Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency (ECPTA) about the lack of co-management in the Dwesa-Cwebe Reserve and other challenges, such as armed police and criminalization at the local level. It was very clear that there is no political will to support the communities.

–What of the country’s national and historical problems does this situation reflect?

-The vestiges of a colonial ideology remain entrenched in South Africa’s conservation policies and protected area management. Despite the end of colonial rule and the welcome to democratic rule, many of these archaic policies and regulations continue to be present in national legislative frameworks and management strategies.

-Apartheid” in Afrikaans means “separation”. Dwesa-Cwebe communities continue to be separated from the sea.

-On paper they have recognized rights, but there has been minimal material change. Yes, I think a lot of the way communities are treated in Dwesa-Cwebe is a reproduction of apartheid.

“The vestiges of a colonial ideology remain entrenched in South Africa’s conservation policies and protected area management,” says Sibongiseni, a worker with Masifundise, a national organization dedicated to defending the rights of fishing communities.

Arnold Maphulcatha came to live by the sea until he was kicked out in the 1970s. He is 80 years old and sits on a rock waiting for a bus to take him from Mpume to the market. The bus has no schedule and runs only once a day. He wears an elegant checkered suit, a classic hat and well-polished shoes. He is friendly, sardonic, but serious, a single question is enough for him to say everything.

-How was it?

-One day, in 1975, they told us that they would give us a house and a plot of land because they wanted to create a reserve here. What they say that in this area you can’t live off the sea, I’ve never understood. The sea is full of food. And the land on the coast is wetter, and food grows. In addition to fishing and farms, we had cows, which ate a grass that here in Mpume there is none and gave us milk that they no longer give us here, and we had everything that the forest gave us: from medicine to shade. Now, it is true, I receive a pension that my parents did not earn; but I am poorer. Almost nothing grows on our farms, we have our houses, but with what they pay me, I can’t buy anything. They have banished us, but above all, they have separated us from the sea, which is an infinite larder.

Mandilakhe, 35 years old, burly and smiling, listens to Arnold and says: “They didn’t just take our land, they swept away our history: they planted a new forest that grew over the graves of our ancestors, we know they are there but we don’t know where”.

Every time he goes to the sea, Mandilakhe performs a ritual: he looks at the horizon and invokes his ancestors. Maya, Gasa, Sophitsho, Nggolo, Msila, Madiba, Zondwa, Velabembhentele, Nxeko, Ntande, Thembu, Ndabeni. They all lived in Dwesa, he says, and clarifies, looking at the ground: “these rituals are not really done like that, they are done at night, with the community around the fire on the shore, telling stories, but we are no longer allowed access to the reserve by the time it gets dark and people no longer gather to tell each other stories. With the reserve they have killed the tradition”. There are just under 3,000 people left living in Dwesa-Cwebe, on the fringes of the nature reserve.

On February 9, 2022 Mandilakhe went to the beach with Thobile Mpunzi, one of his best friends, and another friend he doesn’t want to remember, to fish at night. The guards spotted their shadows in the distance. They shot at them. Nine rangers unloaded their cartridges on these men.

One of the three was hit in the leg and in the back. The friend Mandilakhe does not want to name fled without looking back.

Thobile lay there, and surrounding him, the rocky sand became a huge red puddle. Mandilakhe carried him on his shoulder for 3 hours from the sea to his home. The next day, they paid the equivalent of what they earn in a month for a car to take him to the nearest hospital.

Nine park rangers unloaded their cartridges on these men. One of the three was hit, in the leg and in the back. The friend Mandilakhe does not want to name fled without looking back.

Flenki, 32, dives without a snorkel or frog legs among the crevices and caves where lobsters often hide during the day. When he spots one, Flenki surfaces, catches his breath and dives back down for his prey. He tries to do it quickly so as not to spook it. The fisherman slowly approaches and places his fingers just behind the crustacean’s head, where the most vulnerable shell is located. With a quick movement, he snatches it with force, preventing the sharp claws from activating, and rises to the surface.

He deposits the lobster in a hole in the water between the rocks of a breakwater and returns to work. After 5 minutes, he emerges from the bottom with an octopus in his hand. He grabs it by the tentacles and slams it against the rocks once, twice, the third time is the final blow. He lays it on the rock and takes his very handmade fishing rod: a nylon thread line tied to a bamboo branch of about 2 meters with an old shrimp pierced by a bent sewing pin that serves as a hook. He sits on the edge of a high rock to wait for the bite. After two hours, he concludes that nothing will bite: “It’s impossible. At this hour, in the middle of the day, there is no fishing”.

Flenki has two children, worked as a security guard in Johannesburg for a while, but returned to his village and now manages to sell fish to the residents of the condominiums.

A couple of meters from him, a Political Science graduate and two Information Science graduates from Johannesburg, all white, with blue goggles, dive near the rocks and gather some mussels. They are nice people to Flenki, sometimes they buy seafood from him.

Flenki, 32, dives without a snorkel or frog legs among the crevices and caves where lobsters often hide during the day.