A red shipping container sits on a school playground in a small South African town.
The impressive steel structure has an unexpected function – to save children in a country gripped by a drowning epidemic.
Inside is a swimming pool – the only one within 25 kilometers (15 miles) – where children will learn the basics of how to stay afloat.
South Africa has thousands of kilometers of beaches, and in rich environments, swimming pools are in parks.
But only one in seven South Africans know how to swim, and every year around 1,500 people drown, according to the local rescue agency – an average of four people a day.
Drowning tragedy
In the Cape Town suburb of Riebeek-Kasteel, Meiring Primary School, which hosted the container, suffered its own sinking tragedy.
A framed photograph in the entrance hall pays tribute to a 12-year-old boy who died in a dammed lake on a nearby farm in 2021.
“If they know how to float in water, they can save their own lives,” said principal Brenton Cupido.
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“It is very hot here, especially in summer, and we (students) gather every evening, without supervision, to the nearby dam. But many of us cannot swim.”
The toll is a “huge public health problem” rooted in historical inequality, said Jill Fortuin, director of drowning prevention at the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI).
Most of the casualties were black South Africans.
“Apartheid was a big part of the problem,” said Fortuin, who is of mixed heritage.
Under segregation, swimming pools and vacation beaches were restricted to white minorities, providing little incentive for the majority to learn how to swim.
Thirty years after the advent of democracy, stark inequality remains, with limited infrastructure and opportunities.
“Government schools, where most of the disadvantaged are, often don’t have swimming pools,” Fortuin said.
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Faced with choosing between putting food on the table or paying for swimming lessons, most families choose the former, he added.
“Swimming doesn’t seem to be a priority”.
– ‘Safe water’-
To help deal with drownings, NSRI has deployed 1,350 volunteer lifeguards on the country’s coast and installed 1,500 bright pink buoys in various water bodies to help rescuers help those in distress.
But prevention is most important, says the group, whose awareness-raising campaign has reached more than three million people in recent years.
With climate change causing floods and heat waves, the need is increasing, Fortuin said.
The “Survival Swimming Centre” swimming pool installed in Meiring was the brainchild of Andrew Ingram, a 58-year-old drowning prevention manager.
In their homes, some “kids … don’t even have flush toilets. How are they going to have a swimming pool?” he asked.
“We are providing safe water and there are people teaching.”
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The container pool is six meters (20 feet) long and one meter (3.25 feet) deep.
Children are taught how to help a friend in difficulty, control their breathing, orient themselves in the water and use an empty bottle as an emergency float.
Half of school children now know how to float – and most are the first in their families to learn, Cupido said.
Jonathan Van der Merwe used to be very “concerned” that his daughter, who was one of the first to study at Meiring’s swimming pool, could get into trouble in one of the pools around the wine-growing area.
“Right now, I’m calm and relaxed about it,” he said.
The sister container will be installed in a school in KwaZulu-Natal, the eastern province devastated by last year’s deadly floods. Another one is already in the Eastern Cape province.
Petro Meyer, 62, NSRI water safety instructor, has introduced about 100 students aged between six and 12 to swimming survival.
“You should see his smile when he realizes he’s floating on his own for the first time,” she said. “We want to create a new culture in these children.”