By Pauline Odhiambo
As a child, Zandi Ndhlovu was cautioned to fear large waterbodies.
While growing up in Soweto, a black township in South Africa on the edge of Johannesburg, Zandi understood that rivers were the place where drowning could happen, and that the ocean, though many kilometres from her home, was forbidden territory – a sacred space reserved for the ancestors.
“Whenever there was a drowning incident at the river near my grandmother’s place, we were told that a snake in the water had taken someone, and so there was always this element of mystery and fear around water,” she tells TRT Afrika. “There was also this narrative that ‘black people don’t swim’.”
Zandi was 12 years when she first saw an ocean and quickly learned that it was an exclusive space – the preserve of white people and their water sports. She never imagined that she would one day become South Africa’s first black female instructor in freediving – a sport where, instead of using air tanks, divers explore the depths of the ocean while holding their breath before coming back to the surface for air.
“Once I started diving, there was more curiosity than fear. I felt at home and perfectly safe in the water,” says Zandi, now a 35-year-old film maker, public-speaker and underwater photographer better-known as ‘Black Mermaid’.
Near-drowning
But her first interaction with deep water was not as calming. A near-drowning incident during a swimming lesson in her childhood had made her distrustful of deep waters.
“I had just joined a new school where the swim teacher asked the whole class to jump into the pool. She was my first white teacher and I felt too shy to tell her that I didn’t know how to swim, and so I just jumped in with the rest of my classmates. I almost drowned,” she recounts.
Her teacher rescued and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on her.
That incident, though scary, did not stop her from exploring the seas. At 28 years old, decided she was ready to try snorkeling for the first time during a trip to Bali.
“I had never been so far out at sea before. So, when I jumped in, I immediately thought I was drowning, and started screaming for help,” she recalls. “But once I calmed down, I dived into the water and just followed our dive leader. I must have only held my breath for about 20 seconds, but it was a game changer. I saw the coral and beautiful fish, and the sun rays piercing through the water, and just fell in love.”
Diving course
The experience prompted her to take a diving course, and in 2020, she became South Africa's first black female freediving instructor.
But the journey was not easy. “I was always the only black person on the boat,” she says. “There was this assumption that everyone could speak Afrikaans, and that was isolating because it made it harder to keep up with the lessons.”
Her braided hairstyle, done in a bright blue, was also a talking point during lessons.
“I would often be asked, ‘Are you going to dive with all of that hair’?” she recalls. “It was a reminder that I was an outsider.”
Her family members were also shocked to learn that she was training to become an instructor, and asked why she was doing a “white people’s thing”. She would later show them a video of one of her dives where a massive shark was seen looming near her in the same frame.
‘Can do anything’
“My grandmother was always saying, ‘Zandi, you’re not supposed to be in the ocean.’ But when I showed her that video, she said ‘if you can do that, and live to tell about it, then you can do anything.”
“That was a turning point because it meant that I could now openly share my underwater stories with her and other people as well,” says Zandi who started underwater filming in 2018. “Through filmmaking and photography, my storytelling is to create invitation and access to ocean spaces so that global audiences can be reminded that we’ve always lived with the ocean.”
Many free divers stay underwater for an average of 45 seconds, which allows them to explore about 30 feet beneath the surface. But some free divers can dive up to 100 metres deep and hold their breath for four minutes or longer.
“My deepest dive to date has been 35 metres on a single breath,” says Zandi, adding that old fears can still crop up during dives.
“Sometimes, the deeper I go, the more the old fears come up. Suddenly, all the horror stories of water I’ve ever heard of in my life come alive when I’m 23 metres deep, and I’m wondering if I have enough breath in my lungs to get back to the surface.”
Black Mermaid Foundation
Despite her fears, Zandi qualified to be an instructor in 2020.
Her resolve to not become another black person working in a dive shop propelled her to establish the Black Mermaid Foundation – a Cape Town-based organisation that works to create diverse representation in the ocean space and encourage black people to be more confident in the waters.
Based in Cape Town’s south-west coast, where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet, the foundation organises ocean exploration for many young people across the country, giving swimming lessons as well as opportunities to watch penguins at play in an attempt to drum up interest in ocean conservation.
She has widened the scope of her foundation’s work to include “ocean hubs” – spaces across the country with books and other ocean-learning materials where children can learn more about the deep waters.
The first of these hubs is being set up in Langa, a township located about 10 kilometres from central Cape Town.
Ocean protection
“There's poverty in Langa, and that has led to an increase in drug abuse and gender-based violence. Setting up an ocean hub in places like that could mean everything to a kid who wants to escape from all that.”
She hopes the ocean hubs will give rise to a diverse group of “ocean guardians” interested in conservation to beat climate change worldwide.
“Ocean guardians are the people that live around the waters, but proximity to the water doesn’t always equate to access,” Zandi says. “The more black and brown people share in the joys of the ocean, the more they will care about it. That’s how we can begin to protect it and advocate differently for ocean protection.”
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