As I listened to the speech of South African Navy chief, Vice Admiral Monde Lobese, which was circulating on social media, venting his frustration about the little attention our country gives to the two oceans (Atlantic and Indian) surrounding us, my mind was drawn to a hymn of ancient Egyptians about the river Nile. In this “Hymn to the Nile,” these ancient people praise in flattering terms this river that was so central to their mythology because of the existential role it played in their livelihood and as the foundation of their civilisation.

Somewhere the hymn reads: “Lord of the fish, during the inundation, no bird alights on the crops. You create the grain, you bring forth the barley, ensuring perpetuity to the temples. If you cease your toil and your work, then all that exists is in anguish. If the gods suffer in heaven, then the faces of men waste away.”

Ancient Egyptians 5,000 years ago recognised the strategic importance of the Nile to them. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers were the lifeblood of Mesopotamia. The Indus Valley Civilisation was linked to the Indus River, and so was ancient China, which flourished thanks to the Yellow River. Similarly, the ancient Romans understood that their power was connected to the Mediterranean Sea. The rise and global dominance of the West is rooted in how Western Europeans came to dominate the world’s oceans, rounding the Cape and conquering the Atlantic Ocean to land in the Americas.

If ancient peoples understood the strategic importance of sea power; if countries like Australia invest so much in their relationship with the oceans like Vice Admiral Lobese told his audience, why is South Africa still falling behind? Must nature convert us into an island before we could better appreciate the strategic significance of the two oceans surrounding us?

We should always keep the ocean in our subconscious because it is a channel that Jan van Riebeeck used to land on our shores. Our nation is diverse today thanks to the oceans that brought people from Europe, India, and the Malay region into our country. Yet we hardly speak of ourselves as a Sea People or our country as a Sea Nation, even though we are.

South Africa is uniquely positioned between two oceans, featuring three coastlines that stretch approximately 3,000 kilometres. It is the only country in Africa with contiguous landmasses bordered by more than one ocean. The two oceans are holding our country like a mother with a baby cuddled into her two arms. Over 30% of South Africa’s population, exceeding 20 million people, live along the coast. This is notably significant because only 11 African countries have populations over 20 million. Of our five immediate neighbours, only Mozambique falls into this category.

After 1994, we had to focus on the essential post-apartheid reconstruction and development. Coming out of decades of isolation, the new South Africa needed to integrate itself into the world as a responsible member of the global community. We should commend ourselves for our outstanding performance on the world stage. As for addressing the legacy of apartheid, we still have a mountain to climb ahead of us. We will need our two oceans to lift us above this mountain for the future prosperity of our nation.

One lesson we should learn from the past thirty years of our outreach into the world is the limitation of a pot plant strategy in our approach. While we excelled at growing our leaves and extending our branches into the world, and while we grew taller and taller with time, our roots remained confined within the boundaries of a potplant. In the next phase, we should break free from this confinement and allow our roots to expand and anchor themselves into our two oceans. The ocean is where our future lies, lest we suffer the fate of a bonsai tree that is so beautiful yet its growth is stunted and its future trapped in a pot.

The time has come to do what we should have long done – integrate our two oceans into our national interest outlook to leverage our strategic position as a Sea Nation. This should be a strategic priority at the highest levels of government. It should also be reflected in our national branding and embedded in our foreign policy strategy and narrative. We must incorporate our two-oceans philosophy into our public education systems.  

Vice Admiral Lobese has already made a compelling case for securing our two oceans militarily and highlighted the concerning state of our naval capability. We already have a blue economy strategy that can only be reaffirmed for now; and it has been eleven years since the government launched its flagship Operation Phakisa. In our new approach, this strategy should not be a sideline interest known only to experts and its stakeholders. It should be integrated everywhere – in our national interest priorities, in school syllabuses, across all media, and the whole of society should be mobilised behind it.

One regret I should mention here is that during my years as an advisor to the Minister of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, it never occurred to me to give ocean diplomacy the attention it deserves. I wasn’t as active on blue economy foreign policy issues as I should have been. South Africa is a founding member of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), and we were always present at its meetings, but not to the extent we should have been. I personally don’t remember attending a single meeting. Nor was I ever genuinely interested in multilateral affairs relating to the Law of the Sea.

My regrets aside, for now, I just want to focus on a matter that sparked my interest in this area – the need for a balanced development of our coastlines. While the Indian Ocean coastline hosts megacities in eThekwini, East London, and Qhebega, the same cannot be said for our Atlantic Ocean side. Aside from white-painted Dutch-style architecture and small towns scattered along this coast, we do not have a single megacity here. Our national road network is skewed towards the beauty of the South Coast and the wine estates in Stellenbosch. The West Coast, with its semi-desert dry landscape and succulent plants, is the black sheep of the family.

We can address this issue by creating two megacities on the West Coast. One is already developing around the Langebaan-Saldanah–Vredenburg complex. I want to advocate for Port Nolloth as our second location.

The South African fishing industry is concentrated on the West Coast, where the cold waters are considerably richer in oxygen and nutrients than those of the East Coast. During snoek season starting in March, fishers from all over the Western Cape head to Hondeklip Bay and Port Nolloth, where snoek is believed to “arrive” first.

Port Nolloth is a port and mining town located in the far northwest of the Northern Cape, with a small population of just over 6,000 inhabitants. It is situated approximately 700 kilometres from Cape Town and within an hour’s drive of Namibia’s Oranjemund. The town was established in 1855 as a seaport for the copper mines at Okiep, initially accessible by rail and subsequently by road. The settlement experienced a decline in the early twentieth century but was revitalised following the discovery of diamonds in 1926. During the 1970s, the harbour underwent deepening and expansion, and diamond mining activities continue to this day.

Fortunately, the development of Port Nolloth is already integrated into the plans of the national government and the Northern Cape provincial authorities. Accordingly, “The Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Ms Nomalungelo Gina, states that the Northern Cape coastal town of Port Nolloth possesses the potential to once again become a hub of economic activity, provided that all stakeholders collaborate to implement the nine-point socio-economic development plan formulated for the Namakwa District Municipality as part of the District Development Model (DDM).”

In 2015, the Northern Cape government released a study entitled “Ocean Economy: Investigating Opportunities for the Northern Cape,” which was predicated on the belief that “South Africa’s oceans have the potential to catalyse the country’s economic growth.” The study revealed that “In the Northern Cape, Port Nolloth, Boegoebaai, and Hondeklipbaai were identified as having significant potential for harbour infrastructure, marine/aquaculture, small-town development, tourism, and job creation through projects associated with the Expanded Public Works Programme.” Significant advancements have been made at Port Nolloth via Operation Phakisa, such as harbour infrastructure upgrades, aquaculture projects, and urban renewal efforts. These initiatives aim to diversify the local economy beyond its traditional reliance on diamond mining.

What is missing from these positive developments at Port Nolloth is that the public remains unaware of them. It continues to be an Operation Phakisa sideshow with occasional media coverage. In the strategy we envisage, Port Nolloth would feature prominently in the President’s State of the Nation Address. This town is not yet a destination for a gold rush, nor is it booming or about to witness its first high-rise building or open a few Spar supermarket outlets.

Thinking strategically about Port Nolloth within the context of a balanced development strategy will allow us to do something long overdue – connect the Indian and Atlantic coastlines through infrastructure development. We can take a leaf from the USA’s book, where 19th-century settlers linked the future of the country with roads and railway lines connecting the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. At the turn of the 20th century, as the USA was ascending to global influence, it completed the Panama Canal as a pathway between the two oceans.

Our story in South Africa is different. To date, we lack direct road or railway links from our Indian to Atlantic coastlines. There is no airport that serves the entire Atlantic coastline from the Namibia border to the West Coast while the Indian Ocean side has at least three. South Africa has eight major commercial seaports, and only one, Saldanha Bay, is located on the West Coast.  

The Khoi people named Table Mountain, Huri ǂOaxa, meaning “where the sea rises”, because in their worldview, the ocean and the natural landscape are one continuous, seamless whole. There is value in investing in this ancient wisdom. 

* Eddy Maloka is Visiting Professor at the Institute of Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.

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