Beaches as Landscapes

[Sophie Chevalier]

I read with interest the message on the fishermen in Durban. I carry on myself some research on Durban and I became interested in the historical construction of landscapes of sea shores and beaches which started in the 18th century in Europe. 

My hypothesis is this vision of sea shores came with the European settlers. African people were excluded from the beaches during apartheid period, and in this area, KwaZulu-Natal, there were never a great tradition of fishing. 

In short, beaches and sea shores with piers are directly imported from Europe, and in this representation, local fishermen were/are excluded of the piers and beaches (read the historians of landscapes and sea shores like Corbin for example). Therefore, pushing fishermen out of the piers and beaches, is build up a "perfect" beach landscape...following the European models. Of course, it is not the only reason as you have mentioned, but beaches are also landscapes historically elaborated in specific cultural contexts. 

[Sjoerd van Grootheest]

Hi, It is not completely true that the piers have always been inaccessible for fishermen to fish. The old west street pier and patterson's groin (50s -70s) were open to fishermen. When the bay of plenty, diary beach and north beach piers were built halfway the 80s the fishermen were initially not allowed. They organised protest and through their dalogue with the mayor at the time, 2 of 3 piers were opened (diary beach & bay of plenty).
I agree that an abstract foreign model may play a role in the design of the beachfront today. Surprisingly so, as the NewYork harbour, as well as the beaches and promenades along the coastlines of the Netherlands, Belgium,, France, Prouga, Spain, Greece, Italy, and so .. are often utilized by fishers (who may or may not financially depend on their catch) also forming a tourist attraction.

The 1,5 km long harbour mouth at Hoek van Holland is a beautiful spot for fishing and much utilized. Durban bans fishers from the (similar) south pier referring to the 'keypoint areas act' (legislature stemming from apartheid days). The act sais that entries to strategic sites such as harbour must be garanteed safety, in order to do business with the rest of the world. To allow people on the south pier might allow terrorists to do this or the other.. No such law is uphold in the hoek van holland case - which leads to the harbour of Rotterdam, the biggest harbour in the world...

Also, Kwazulu Natal has a very rich fishin history, especially after the arrival of indentured labourers from India in the 1860s! What is now the harbour used to be a swamp called Fynnlands. A large and growing Indian community depended on their catch. Some took out a boat and nets, others used hoop nets and so on.
Furthermore, during apartheid days, teh south pier was a site where all 'races' fished. The white men were allowed to fish all the at the end of the pier (reaching furthest into the sea and therefor having more access to the bigger fish - they often caught white sharks with a rod and line!) while the Indians, coloureds and africans were allowed to fish up to half way the pier. the markers are still visible today.

[Keith Hart]

This is an edited version of what I posted in Sjoerd's thread.

There are interesting issues of historiography in these two discussions which overlap even as they point to different foci. Sjoerd's method is mainly to link the expulsion of the fishermen from some piers to the World Cup, FIFA, neoliberalism and so on. One could just as easily link it to the Durban Municipality's long-term plans for the sea front (associated with the City Manager, Mike Sutcliffe, an ex-Marxist geographer) which were partly served by World Cup related activity.

Until recently the up-market end of the beach was white and North. The promenade ended in the South at Addington hospital, a section of the beach that was open to blacks during apartheid (there were no shark nets there!). Even though there are no longer legal restrictions on use of the beach, the racial mix varies quite markedly from White/Indian in the North to African in the South. The City plans to demolish the hospital and replace it with a luxury hotel or similar. It has encouraged a lot of investment at this end of the beach including uShaka marine world, Moyo's restaurant and pier bar, the Point Venice-style housing development, a planned yachting marina and so on. The World Cup saw the extension of the promenade to its limit and this involved demolition of shacks, informal eateries etc. There has been a big police effort in the last five years making the area a lot safer than it was. The idea is that South Beach will become the natural up market end of the shore near to the city centre at the expense of North Beach, where there is now a casino.

Durban was ranked in the top ten family beach resorts in the world by Lonely Planet last year. It's climate is subtropical and particularly attractive in the Southern winter compared with either Cape Town or Johannesburg. The city faces an eroding tax base. Its port is still the largest in the Southern hemisphere, but many high end businesses are relocating to the Northern Coast around Umhlanga and the airport is now 35 km north of the city in what was once Zululand. Tourism is the city's main hope for economic growth and surfing is intrinsic to that.

I defer to Sjoerd's greater knowledge of the details of this conflict, but one aspect of it is a clash between surfers and fishermen. Both use the end of a pier: to jump in and catch fish respectively. The race/class mix of these groups is of course widely different. The surfers complain that the fishermen leave detritus (animal, vegetable and mineral) where they were. Durban municipality worries about its status as a surfing destination, but even more about the effect of confronting this 'mess' on high end punters.

Let me be clear about my interest. I own a lovely apartment in an art deco building at the South end. I like walking to the end of a pier and watching both the fishermen and the surfers. The feeling of Durban beach as a cross between Blackpool and Miami in the 50s pleases me. I invented the notion of an informal economy and advocate public support for the self-organized activities of poor people. I don't think this is simply a question of neoliberal, FIFA-inspired aggression and popular resistance. Durban's planners are not abstractly pursuing a 'world-class' image which has to be cleansed of the poor, but they are trying to find a way of resisting global changes that are putting a lot of pressure on their city's viability.

There are literally hundreds of northern students/scholars piling into South Africa to document how the poor are being screwed under ANC neoliberal rule. That is only one part of the story and it is a rather repetitive one. I think it undermines the hope that South Africa's political economy can flourish under an African majority government. In that sense this story reproduces belief in the durable racial divisions of Atlantic and world society.