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Fearless in Port St Johns on the eve of June 16

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A student holds a banner aloft during the march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria yesterday.
A student holds a banner aloft during the march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria yesterday.
Theana Breugem

Wednesday evening. I’m standing in the rain eating crayfish and mussels cooked on a municipal braai stand and freezing my nuts off.

Every time I wipe the splendid smoky, lemony juices covering my hands on the thighs of my jeans, I reach for the quart bottle I’ve jammed into the wet sand next to the public toilets at Second Beach for a washdown.

It’s the evening before June 16. The Anglo American social responsibility what-what that we came to Lusikisiki for is klaar.

There’s no way we’re driving back to Durban today. The five 20-minute stop and gos between Bizana and Port Edward we crawled through on the way down nearly killed us. They also nearly killed the minder sent along to make sure we don’t stray. Or start handing out red berets. Or something.

Faced with an evening at Lusiki, we’ve decided to brave the 133 downhill bends in the pothole-riddled 40km that leads to Port St Johns. Lusiki’s a dump. Port St Johns is also a dump, but a bangin’ one.

Second Beach is quiet. The pre-June 16 party hasn’t started yet. There are only the outies who survive off the ocean, a muti seller and a couple of department of health cats from Mthatha, unless they’ve stolen the state vehicle they’re sitting and drinking in.

There’s a beautiful left towards the southern side of the beach, but it’s too cold to bodysurf. I’m not one of those wit ous who keeps turning up the
air-con in the office when everybody else is freezing. That, and the fact that there’s been a person eaten by sharks here every year for nearly a decade, keeps me on dry land. I stopped swimming at Second Beach after I saw pictures of the Austrian tourist who got bitten in half last year.

A fleet of buses and taxis arrives. Schoolchildren in tracksuits and T-shirts from the Holy Cross at Lusiki pour out. Second Beach is a pit stop on their June 16 outing.

The girls head for the toilets; the boys head for the beach. The teachers commandeer the braai stands and get busy grilling a mountain of that tomato wors you only find in the Eastern Cape.

A group of girls head past the shark warning boards and straight into the ocean, tracksuits and all. A couple of them clearly can’t swim. It’s not stopping them. They’re fearless, just like the laaities 40
years ago.

The teachers start doling out the wors. The swimmers emerge from the most dangerous stretch of ocean on the planet, giggling and shaking from the cold, and head for the buses.

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