FROM SPECTATOR TO SWIMMER: Where dolphins swim with everyone: Inside Gqeberha’s growing open-water community

Nomawethu Nogaga used to stand on Shark Rock Pier watching other people swim, never imagining she could be one of them. Then Ra’ees Khan waded into the water beside her. Today, she is part of a growing movement helping more people discover that the ocean belongs to everyone.

Not long ago, Nomawethu Nogaga stood on Shark Rock Pier at Hobie Beach in Gqeberha watching other people swim into the waters of Algoa Bay.

She admired them from a distance, never imagining she could be one of them.

Today, the 48-year-old South African Revenue Service legal department employee regularly swims beyond the pier to about as far as local pub Barney’s. Her next goal is to reach the Six Pillars slipway off Humewood Beach, close to a kilometre there and back.

“I used to be on the pier watching those people, and I never even thought in my wildest dreams that I could one day be one of them,” she said.

After completing her first proper ocean swim in Gqeberha earlier this year, Nogaga cried.

“I said to him, after we came out, can I just have a moment to take this all in, because I was in so much awe and in disbelief at the same time that I was actually there.”

The “him” was Ra’ees Khan, an educationist at Nelson Mandela University and the driving force behind SwimGQ, a community movement that is boldly changing who feels welcome in the ocean.

For Khan, helping people swim is only part of the mission. “We have a drowning crisis in South Africa, where probably less than 5% of the population can swim,” he said.

“And when I say swim, I mean tread water and save yourself if you’re ever in water. So part of our mandate is to solve the drowning crisis through education and access to water spaces.”

Ahead of World Ocean Day on 8 June, Khan said SwimGQ deliberately focused on people who would not ordinarily see themselves as open-water swimmers.

“If we want to solve the drowning crisis, we don’t want people that are on the beach already,” he said. “If we want to educate people, you need to do outreach.”

That outreach has helped SwimGQ grow into one of South Africa’s largest open-water swimming communities, with more than 1,500 members connected through its WhatsApp groups and regular sea swims.

The group grew out of Ocean Tribe, an informal swimming circle founded years earlier by longtime open-water swimmer Ralph West, who asked Khan to take over the running of it.

“He didn’t want to be admin at all,” said West, who pushed him to accept. “His passion for this thing was immense.

“He’s been such a blessing for this entire swim community,” West said.

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