Letter from the CEO

Growing the Maritime Heritage of Algoa Bay?

The South African International Maritime Institute (SAIMI) is South Africa's apex maritime institute.??It was established in 2014 through an effort championed by the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) and Nelson Mandela University in partnership with a broad base of stakeholders.

Heritage is a key focus of our efforts to help educate, train, and develop a highly competent workforce for the ocean economy. Our location in Algoa Bay places us at the advent of global maritime trade, a heritage capital asset which is rarely understood and recognised.???Given the recent celebration of heritage month in September, we should take time to understand the significance of our past and the options it offers for socio-economic development.

Algoa Bay is the location of one of the two global processes which have shaped the modern era of environmental degradation, trade, conflict, dispossession, and prosperity – the globalisation of trade between East and West.??The terrestrial globalisation of trade was centred on the geopolitical region of the Middle East, shaping the conflicts which persist to the present day.

The maritime globalisation of trade was far more recent – 1488, to be precise.??It was Bartolomeu Dias's visit in 1488 which defined global maritime trade. Algoa Bay became prominent in global maritime trade for two main reasons. Firstly, it was the point at which Bartholomew Dias realised that he had opened the maritime route to the East for global trade. The discovery established Portuguese maritime and trade dominance.??Portugal became the world's first global maritime superpower, a status retained for a century before being contested by the Dutch, English and French. Secondly, in support of global maritime trade, Algoa Bay became a landmark for navigation to the East and for water.

The Southern Cape coast was a formidable challenge in navigating the route to the East. In developing global maritime trade, the Agulhas current became one of the first deep-sea currents to be studied in any detail by Oceanographers and Algoa Bay became established as the definitive landmark on the route to the East. The landmark attracted visits for water - the most basic of human needs - and the maritime economy of Algoa Bay has developed ever since.

The heritage of Algoa Bay is awash with maritime heritage assets, ranging from the spectacular landscapes which established us as the global maritime landmark to the aquatic wonders of the bay.??Our coastline tells a story of human habitation and industry dating back to the early stone age, whilst tracing our progression to anatomically modern humans and integration with global maritime trade. These are assets which should be celebrated and positioned as national treasures, but they're not.\

SAIMI, through its partnership with the Mandela Bay Maritime Cluster, has embarked on an intervention which leverages our unique maritime heritage for achieving socio-economic development goals. The intervention has been developed to celebrate our maritime heritage by stringing together the plethora of existing maritime heritage assets into a framework which supports our goal of educating, training, and developing a maritime workforce.?

For instance, residents of the City of Nelson Mandela Bay remain oblivious to our role in the age of discovery and global maritime trade. We are recognised by the only statue of its kind in the world – to the legendary Prester John - the myth which provided the impetus for early maritime exploration. It is through education that we will appreciate how structures such as the Harbour Board Building, the Main Library, the cemeteries of the City, the seafaring clubs, lighthouses, and churches – to name a few - are integrally linked to the development of global maritime trade. Our knowledge, use and understanding of these heritage assets have a major role to play in unlocking the maritime potential of the Bay. Our key to sustainable maritime prosperity rests on the construction of interpretive frameworks which reconcile our fragmented heritages - of maritime trade, colonialism, indigenous settlements, environmental degradation, and democracy - with the socio-economic development challenges of the City.

Graham Taylor

Mandela Bay Maritime Cluster