Nonagenarian looks back on ‘Black December’

LONG-time South Coast resident George Pelser of Ramsgate, who celebrated his 90th birthday this week, remembers when Margate was a small holiday village comprising a few hotels, holiday cottages, small shops and a garage or two, way back in the 1950s.

He remembers how the sleepy village was transformed into a carnival town during the holiday seasons. It even had its own festival – the Hibiscus Festival – and a Hibiscus queen who was crowned at a lavish function. One year, he was helping the festival organisers when he met the newly crowned queen. Her name was Penny Coelen and she would go on to win the Miss South Africa title then to reign as Miss World in 1958.

Yes, Margate was a lively place in the 1950s but George also remembers when the popular holiday resort suddenly turned into a ghost town.

Although he grew up in Gauteng, George visited the South Coast frequently and always wanted to live here. A qualified motor mechanic, he spent more and more time on the South Coast. He eventually found employment in Margate and moved there permanently in 1958. It was a year after ‘Black December’, when a series of devastating shark attacks had occurred, a number of them fatal. The holidaymakers who had flocked to the South Coast during previous years had all fled and Margate’s once-flourishing tourism industry was rapidly dying.

As George got to know businessmen in the town he realised how hard they were working to provide swimmers with protection against sharks and to bring back the holidaymakers. A keen fishermen and skilled ski-boat skipper, he was involved in an interesting shark protection exercise, undertaken by the CSIR. He helped to lay an electricity cable on the sea bed between Margate and Lucien Points. It was hoped that an electric current would keep the sharks away. For a number of reasons, this system failed but some research is still taking place on the use of electrical devices as shark deterrents.

Many inshore net systems were tried and used but when an offshore system, put in place in Durban, proved promising, local councillors decided to go the same way. George was one of the local fishermen who was employed, initially on a part-time basis, to maintain the nets. More and more South Coast towns followed Durban’s lead and soon George was working full time. He did this right up to the late 1970s when the Natal Anti Sharks Board – now KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board – took over the meshing of the nets.

As George points out, attitudes to sharks – and to the environment – have changed dramatically over the years. He commends the sharks board’s new approach to the sardine run, with officials keeping close tabs on the situation and lifting the nets timeously to avoid unnecessary deaths of sharks and other marine creatures. Many sharks and dolphins used to die in the nets during past sardine seasons, he says.

After living on the South Coast for more than 40 years, George has many interesting theories about the sardine run but remains fascinated by this natural phenomenon. He finds it amazing that so much mystery still surrounds the arrival – or non-arrival – of these little silver fish.

He also remembers when initial attempts to keep swimmers safe from sharks inadvertently caused a swimming hazard in later years. Some posts sunk into the sea bed to hold inshore nets were proving dangerous and George remembers being involved in the difficult operation of removing them. Eventually, he managed to do so, thanks to the help of the late Sonny Evans, one of the most gifted inventors the South Coast has ever seen.

George has many humorous stories to tell about early days in Margate and about his experiences as one of the town’s long-serving police reservists. A cup of tea and a chat with the new nonagenarian about the ‘old days’ is both fascinating and funny. Four decades down the line, George still believes there is no place like home.