The surfer and tribal chief fighting to save a 550km South African coast

Martinus Fredericks meets me outside the police station in South Africa’s Atlantis, a somewhat forlorn semi-industrial town on the outskirts of Cape Town. On this winter’s morning, Atlantis is shrouded in fog. After a firm handshake, he leads me across the road into an unmarked building.

On the second floor, at the end of a wide, airy corridor that also houses the community radio station, we enter an empty coffee shop with six plastic tables adorned with black tablecloths and gold place settings. Over tea and sandwiches, Fredericks tells me how an astounding midlife revelation led him to become the face of a social and environmental battle.

Born in 1965, he grew up in the agricultural town of Robertson, speaking Afrikaans and identifying as “coloured” – the apartheid regime’s catch-all term for people who did not fit into their “white”, “Black” or “Indian” racial boxes. After school, he studied agriculture and environmental sciences, later working in nature conservation.

His life was upended in 2012 when representatives of the !Ama Chieftaincy in Bethany, Namibia, visited him in Atlantis. “They told me that I was a direct descendant of their leader !Abeb,” he says, adding that they asked him to take over the South African leadership of the !Ama tribe.

The !Ama people are pastoralists who, before the arrival of Europeans, followed their herds across a vast swath of Southern Africa (present-day South Africa and Namibia) in search of the best grazing.

“My first thought was, ‘What the hell?’” he says. “I was in complete shock.” When he was growing up, his father had spent a lot of time in Namibia (then known as South West Africa), but he had never explained why. “We only found out after his passing that he was visiting his people. Our people.”

In the 12 years since being made “gaob”, or supreme leader, Fredericks has grown into the role. Although he still dresses in Western clothes and can only speak a smattering of !Ama, he has taken it upon himself to fight for the rights of his people – who have been excluded by successive governments for at least 350 years.

Before Europeans settled in South Africa in 1652, the !Ama knew no borders, following the rains in search of grazing land for their cattle. But the arrival of land-hungry colonials – who noted with interest the copper bracelets worn by the metalworking !Ama – and the introduction of title deeds saw the !Ama shunted to less fertile land that nobody else wanted.

Their exclusion became more complete with the “discovery” of diamonds near Kimberley in 1867 (here, Fredericks notes that his people had always known about diamonds, which they used to teach children to count). “In the 1900s, Europeans started to put up fences,” says Fredericks. “And in 1923, the state became aware of alluvial diamonds [removed from their original source, typically by rivers] in the Richtersveld [a mountainous desert region at the northernmost extremity of Namaqualand] and they started preventing us from accessing the land at all.”

Mining threatens to destroy much of the West Coast, a sparsely populated and environmentally important region: It is home to myriad endemic plant species, not to mention dozens of significant seabird colonies and marine breeding grounds.

While diamond mining has already wreaked havoc on its northern reaches – watch the nonprofit group Protect the West Coast (PTWC)’s film Mines of Mordor for an idea of the damage – heavy sand mining for minerals like zircon, ilmenite, rutile and magnetite looks set to destroy environments along the entire coastline.

By digging up beaches and building cofferdams – dams built to expose the seabed for mining – entire intertidal ecosystems, which lie between the high and low water marks, are ruined. Although companies are legally required to rehabilitate an area when they have finished mining it, government enforcement of legislation is poor and mining firms often pass the buck by selling mines to front companies.

“It should be really easy to tell the difference between legal and illegal mining,” says Mike Schlebach, a big wave surfer-come-activist who is determined not to allow mining to destroy the West Coast, a 550km (342-mile) expanse of rugged beaches and dramatic cliffs where flamingos, seals and jackals outnumber humans.

“But the government departments charged with enforcing mining and environmental laws have blurred the lines completely. We’ve seen loads of cases where due process is not followed.”

It is hardly surprising, given the country’s racist past, that in the 19th and 20th centuries, the riches buried within South Africa’s soils were seen as the preserve of the white man. But – despite what seemed to be a landmark legal victory in 2003 – little has changed for the !Ama since the dawn of multiracial democracy in 1994.

“They didn’t just steal our land,” says Fredericks. “They stole our identity, our language and our traditions. But we will get them back.”

Recently, on a bitterly cold July night, in a dilapidated community hall in the windswept mining town of Alexander Bay, where the mighty Orange River spews diamond-laden silt into the Atlantic Ocean, Fredericks convened a community meeting. He was flanked by an unlikely backing band: Schlebach, who is also the founder of the PTWC group, which is opposed to unjust mining, and two fellow surfers who serve on the PTWC board. Also present was grassroots activist Bongani Jonas of Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA), a law professor and a legal strategist.

Fewer than two dozen community members – their faces hewn by lives lived in the harsh and forgotten landscapes of the Richtersveld – braved icy winter gales to hear Fredericks speak about his efforts to finally see justice for his people. It was not the first such meeting and it will not be the last, but now that Fredericks has so many other players on board, there is a sense of renewed optimism.

Way back in 1998, during the heady days of Nelson Mandela’s presidency, the Richtersveld community made a land claim demanding that the state-owned mining company Alexkor concede a controlling share of mineral rights to the community. In 2003, nine years before Fredericks even found out about his !Ama heritage, the claim was granted – seemingly righting a 300-year-old wrong and unlocking millions of dollars for the community.

But now, despite the highest court in the land ruling that the Richtersveld community is entitled to “ownership of the subject land (including its minerals and precious stones) and to the exclusive beneficial use and occupation thereof”, the people remain as destitute as ever.

As Fredericks explains: “It was signed. It was agreed between Alexkor and the community. But we are still trying to unscramble the eggs.”

Andries Joseph, a 70-something !Ama man from the tiny village of Lekkersing about 113km (70 miles) from Alexander Bay, speaks of a community that has been taken over by corrupt locals and government agents. “We are a slave on our own ground,” he grumbles.

“The cry of the people, the cry of the old mothers and fathers who saw things go wrong in front of their eyes [is being ignored]. There is no halting, there is no stop.”

He is not wrong: What used to be fertile farmland two years ago has become a dusty wasteland and there is even mining inside the national park declared to protect the unique flora and fauna of the Richtersveld. But the !Ama can only watch on as giant machines rip landscapes apart and towns fall into disrepair.

The legal aspects of the case are complicated but the human side of the story is devastatingly simple: The people who live on the West Coast have always been sidelined.

“The West Coast is a victim of its own isolation,” says Schlebach, who is on a mission to finally give the people who call it home a voice through a combination of social media posts, legal pressure and old-fashioned community activism. “We are not against all mining,” stresses Schlebach. “But we are against mining that does not follow the environmental and societal safeguards enshrined in our constitution.”

It all started with a wave

Schlebach’s crusade began in August 2020 when, after enduring one of the world’s strictest lockdowns, he was finally able to embark on a solo surfing trip to the coast that shaped him as a surfer. Now 47, he had been surfing the gnarly waves of the West Coast since his 13th birthday.

“The West Coast is one of the last frontiers,” he explains. “Heavy, uncrowded waves and untouched landscapes where you can just pitch a tent and free-camp. You can go days without seeing another soul.”

On the first day of that trip, he tried to access a 10km (6.2-mile) strip of coastline wedged between two mines. “I’d surfed there before,” he remembers. “But this time, the security guards at one of the mines wouldn’t let me in.” The next day he drove a little further north to see with his own eyes another recently approved mining project with a worrying name: Ten Beach Extension.

“It was worse than I could have imagined. Ten beaches and 52km (32 miles) of pristine coastline being ripped to shreds by heavy machinery.”

Seeing mines along the West Coast was nothing new for Schlebach, and there has always been a 230km (143-mile) stretch of coastline – the “diamond protected area” – that was entirely off limits. But this was the first time Schlebach got a sense that mining was coming for the rest of the coastline.

He had just exited from a business and had some time on his hands: “I got back on the Monday morning and started calling some friends in the surfing community,” he remembers. “I had no idea how activism worked or what I was up against. But I wasn’t prepared to stand by and watch as the West Coast was destroyed.”

It was always, he stresses, about much more than protecting waves: “But I would never have known what was happening if I hadn’t been a surfer.”

By November 2020, Schlebach and his co-founders had registered Protect the West Coast as a nonprofit company. The early days were tough and there were times when the sheer impunity shown by mining companies and government officials made him seriously question his own naivete. But, thanks in part to the support of influencers like three-time big wave world champion Grant “Twig” Baker (who pioneered many West Coast surf spots in the 2000s), they began to grow their social media profile.

“People were shocked to see what was going on up there.”

Now, just four years later, Protect the West Coast has grown to include scientists, small-scale fishers, lawyers, farmers, community activists, trail runners and the paramount chief of the !Ama people.

South Africa’s history is one of division and it is highly unusual for any organisation to truly transcend race, class, language, education and geography. This is what makes PTWC’s conglomerate of yuppie surfers and academics working alongside penniless fishers and community activists so powerful.

The organisation has already had some remarkable successes. A petition calling for a moratorium on all mining applications in the region has garnered 63,000 signatures. And a trail running race called “Run West“, which traverses 21km (13 miles) of this pristine coastline, has now become an annual fixture – this year’s race is September 22 – and a major source of both income and publicity.

Perhaps most importantly, in 2023, the organisation was granted an out-of-court order to halt mining operations at the mouth of the Olifants River, just 250km (155 miles) north of Cape Town. Pivotal in this process was another ally: Suzanne du Plessis, a longtime resident of the tiny village of Doringbaai, who started an environmental awareness NGO way back in 2005.

A place of serene beauty, the Olifants Estuary is the third largest estuary in South Africa. It is also home to the largest salt marshes in the country, making it an important breeding ground for many fish and bird species, including black oystercatchers, flamingos and pelicans. But this unique ecosystem also harbours an array of sought-after minerals.

Since 2012, Du Plessis has been fighting to prevent mining companies from destroying what should clearly be a nature reserve. “In the beginning, the concern was sand mining and cofferdam mining on the coast,” she recalls. “Then Tormin [Mineral Sands] made an application to prospect on the northern boundary of the Olifants Estuary, 17km (10.5 miles) inland. Despite 37 appeals, its application was granted.”

Du Plessis worried that the floodgates would open, and she was especially concerned about the way in which fishers’ concerns were roundly ignored. “They were mining on land, on the beaches, in the intertidal zone and in the sea,” says Du Plessis, “destroying breeding grounds for fishes and molluscs and birds and preventing public access to the coast” – a right enshrined in South Africa’s constitution.

“The mining and environment ministers are not doing their job,” laments Du Plessis. “They just sign off on applications. They don’t follow their own rules, they just rubber-stamp.”

She first encountered Schlebach and PTWC in 2020, a time when the mining applications were coming in thick and fast. By then, Du Plessis and other concerned citizens and academics had been trying to prevent mining from destroying their beloved estuary for at least eight years. But PTWC’s combination of social media savvy and legal nous was a game changer.

“PTWC is wonderful, because it’s a younger, more tech-savvy generation,” says Du Plessis. “I’d never seen so many different people coming together like that. Of course, there are differences, but what binds us together is even stronger.”

The road ahead

Thanks to contributions from corporate and private donors, PTWC has reached a point where it is nearing financial sustainability. Fredericks, Schlebach and Du Plessis all remain committed to ensuring that the people of the Richtersveld finally benefit from the riches beneath their feet, that mining companies carry out their operations – including rehabilitation programs, according to the letter of the law – and that the last pristine stretches of the West Coast remain that way.

They will continue to pursue their multipronged strategy of social media exposure, legal pressure and community activism.  Schlebach is committed to bringing even more stakeholders into the organisation.

They now have another formidable weapon in their armoury. The development of RIPL, a mobile and desktop app that makes commenting on prospecting and mining rights applications much, much easier.

“Any concerned citizen has the right to object to an application, but the process has always been mired in red tape,” explains Schlebach. RIPL updates users the moment a new application is made and makes commenting as easy as filling out an online restaurant review. “It could be a real game changer,” says Schlebach. “Not only for the West Coast, but for communities all across South Africa.”

Talk about riding the wave.