A red bin stands in a schoolyard in a small South African town.
The imposing steel structure has an unexpected function: to help save young people in a country affected by a drowning epidemic.
Inside is a swimming pool, the only one within a 25-kilometre radius, where children will learn the basics of staying afloat.
South Africa has thousands of kilometers of beaches, and in the wealthy neighborhoods, swimming pools dot the gardens.
Yet only one in seven South Africans knows how to swim, and some 1,500 people drown every year, according to a local rescue institute, an average of four people a day.
In the Cape Town suburb of Riebeek-Kasteel, Meiring Primary School, which houses the container, has suffered its own drowning tragedy.
A framed photo in the entry hall honors a 12-year-old boy who died in a dammed lake on a nearby farm in 2021.
“If he knew how to float on water, he could have saved his own life,” said school principal Brenton Cupido.
“It’s very hot here, especially in summer, and our (students) go every afternoon, unsupervised, to the nearby dams. But most of them don’t know how to swim.”
Cost is a “major public health issue” rooted in historical inequities, said Jill Fortuin, director of drowning prevention at the National Marine Rescue Institute (NSRI).
Most of the deaths are black South Africans.
“Apartheid is a big part of the problem,” said Fortuin, a person of mixed ancestry.
Under segregation, pools and vacation beaches were limited to the white minority, providing little incentive for the majority to learn to swim.
Three decades after the advent of democracy, stark inequalities persist, with limited infrastructure and opportunities.
“Public schools, where the most disadvantaged people go, often don’t have swimming pools,” Fortuin said.
Faced with a choice between putting food on the table or paying for swimming lessons, most families opt for the former, he added.
“Swimming is not seen as a priority.”
‘safe water’
To help combat drowning, NSRI has deployed 1,350 volunteer lifeguards to the country’s beaches and installed 1,500 bright pink buoys in various bodies of water to help rescuers help those in distress.
But prevention is paramount, said the group, whose awareness campaign has reached more than 3 million people in recent years.
With climate change fueling floods and heat waves, the need is increasing, Fortuin said.
The “Survival Swim Center” pool installed in Meiring is the brainchild of Andrew Ingram, 58, a drowning prevention manager.
In their homes, some of the “kids…don’t even have working toilets. So how the hell are they going to have a pool?” she asked.
“We provide drinking water and someone to teach them.”
The container pool is 6 meters long and 1 meter deep.
Children are taught to help their friends in distress, control their breathing, orient themselves underwater, and use an empty bottle as an emergency buoy.
Half the kids in school now know how to float, and most of them are the first in their families to learn, Cupid said.
Jonathan Van der Merwe used to be very “worried” that his daughter, who was one of the first to take lessons in Meiring’s survival group, might run into trouble in one of the many ponds around the wine growing area.
“Now, I’m very calm and relaxed about it,” he said.
A sister container will soon be installed at a school in KwaZulu-Natal, an eastern province devastated by deadly floods last year. Another is already underway in the Eastern Cape province.
Petro Meyer, 62, an NSRI water safety instructor, has introduced some 100 students ages 6 to 12 to survival swimming.
“You should see their smiles when they realize they’re floating on their own for the first time,” he said. “We want to create a new culture in these children.”
