By Liesel Peyper.
City of Cape Town has reopened 37 of its 38 public swimming pools for the summer season. This is the first time in 15 years that this many facilities have opened simultaneously.
The city has followed a phased approach to reopening pools during the summer season, which extends into the new year.
Patricia van der Ross, mayoral committee member for community services and health, says the availability of the swimming pools in the summer months is “an achievement” for the communities of Cape Town “despite the challenges posed by ageing infrastructure”.
The maintenance and refurbishments of the public pools are factored into the city’s “Recreation and Parks” budget over the 2024/25 financial year and the two outer financial years and is estimated to cost R41 million.
This includes work, such as swimming pool redevelopment, the general upgrade of existing swimming pools and swimming pool equipment across the city.
Van der Ross says the maintenance and upgrades will be ongoing, even where facilities have opened, as there are still minor and unforeseen repairs.
‘Passion project’
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, noted in a “Mayoral Minute” addressed to residents, that the reopening of the pools is a “personal passion project” that gives him “much joy”.
“I don’t see these pools as a luxury, or a nice-to-have. Particularly for those young children growing up on the drier parts of the Cape Flats where trees are scarce and the summer heat can be inescapable, a clean and safe public swimming pool is a wonderful public service.”
Some of the public swimming pools in the metro’s lower income areas that have reopened include those in Atlantis, Blue Downs, Delft, Elsies River, Hanover Park, Lentegeur, Manenberg and Ruyterwacht.
The public swimming pools will be open daily until 31 January 2025, on weekends only from 1 February to end-March, and then again daily from 31 March to 21 April.
Hill-Lewis says some of the pools that were repaired and opened had been closed “for years”.
“Our Observatory pool is now open for the first time in eight years. Our Emthonjeni pool in Gugulethu hasn’t been opened in five years. It was a wonderful sight to see the excitement on the faces of children waiting to use the pool — children barely five or six years old who had never seen a pool before.”
Hill-Lewis admits that there have been challenges with the maintenance, oversight and decision-making regarding public swimming pools in the metro.
“I am still working out why things were allowed to slip like that, but we’ve worked very hard to effect major repairs to many of them these last two years. We are now at the point where only one pool – ironically named Vulindlela, which means ‘open the way’ – remains closed for major reconstruction,” the mayor says.
Sea Point Pavillion
A popular and iconic public pool at the Sea Point Pavillion, which attracts thousands of visitors across the metro during the summer season, also reopened on 13 December.
It was closed in September for urgent repair work, which included addressing a sinkhole caused by a collapsed water line.