Black Mermaid: ‘I was always the only black person on the boat’

Zandile Ndhlovu grew up in Soweto, a black township in South Africa on the edge of Johannesburg, where no-one ever dreamed of travelling hundreds of miles to swim in the ocean. There wasn't even a swimming pool.

"And there was this narrative of, 'Black people don't swim, we don't do that stuff,'" she says.

So she wasn't prepared for her first snorkelling trip, in Bali, at the age of 28.

"The captain told everybody to kit up," she recalls.

"I didn't even know what 'kit up' means. I didn't even know what a snorkel did. When I jumped into the water, I started freaking out. I thought I was drowning."

But Ndhlovu says that once she became settled, she felt at peace.

"I told myself to calm down. I looked beneath the surface of the water and couldn't believe the overwhelming blue, the yellow fish, and the sun rays on the coral reef. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life."

The experience prompted her to take a diving course, and three years ago she became South Africa's first black female freediving instructor.

It wasn't always an easy journey.

"I was always the only black person on the boat," she says.

"It was interesting because you go through various things, whether it's language, and everybody is speaking, Afrikaans… or whether it's your wetsuit not fitting, or someone asking: 'Are you gonna dive with all of that hair">Watch the best shots from Aiden Markram's 136 for South Africa against Australia in the ICC World Test Championship final.