Zandile Ndhlovu, freediving and learning to look

In South Africa, Zandile Ndhlovu has made diving a profession, then a language of images and stories. From learning to freedive to taking photographs, she is shaping a way of looking at the ocean and making room for others within it.

A fin above the waves. Zandile Ndhlovu is behind the camera. Her story as a freediver also lives in what she chooses to show.

Taking time to learn before teaching others

In June 2019, she joins a course at Sodwana Bay, hoping to become an instructor. She does not qualify at the end: her fear of depth still needs work. She continues training in quarries around Johannesburg and qualifies in January 2020. Between the ambition and the certificate come those extra months of learning, working through a difficulty before she can guide others.

She completes her qualifying dives at Miracle Waters, near Brits, and becomes a PADI Freediving Instructor. The profession grows from a discovery she made in Bali in 2016, on her first snorkelling trip. Several years separate that encounter with the underwater world from the moment when she can guide others into it.

An image to bring back to shore

A camera gives her another way to extend a dive. During South Africa’s 2023 sardine run, Zandile photographs wildlife. An image holds someone’s gaze; a conversation can begin. She also wants to return to photograph the same places and show how they change.

She likes wide frames, animals and the space around them. Underwater, light, currents and other presences shift the composition. Her principle stays the same: no touching, chasing or moving an animal to get a picture. What she brings to the surface also depends on the room she leaves it.

Room for her own body

In the ocean, there is room for her own body too. She puts it simply: “perfect as I am”, she tells Condé Nast Traveller in 2023. She describes feeling safe in her body there. That relationship with the sea is hers: for her, the water offers a space where this confidence can exist.

Photographs, a book and a film

With Zandi’s Song, she gives that relationship another form. Illustrated by Katlego Keokgale and published by Pan Macmillan South Africa on 15 May 2023, the children’s book follows a girl who dreams of the ocean despite living far from the sea and not yet knowing how to swim. Pictures and fiction offer a way into a world some children have never seen.

She also appears in Shaped by Water, produced by 11th Hour Racing with Protect Our Winters. The film brings her freediving into conversation with Jess Hotter’s skiing and 11th Hour Racing Team’s sailing: three practices connected by water, from the mountains to the ocean.

In 2026, remembering a starfish

A young girl from Langa grips her hand as they float. They count before looking underwater. Then the child keeps her head down longer and, when she comes up, announces that she has seen a starfish. Zandile shares the memory with the Mail & Guardian in August 2026. In this moment that stays with her, counting has given way to looking closely.

Through the Black Mermaid Foundation, which she founded in 2020, that discovery continues in educational snorkelling excursions and programmes about marine ecosystems. She works to make the ocean more accessible to underrepresented communities. Sometimes it begins with a hand to hold, then with what someone feels able to look at for herself.

Understanding the practice

Freediving uses no breathing tank and calls for appropriate training with a trained buddy. The foundation’s snorkelling excursions are different from deep freediving.

Milestones along the way

• 2016 — A first snorkelling trip in Bali.
• 2020 — Qualifying as a freediving instructor after continuing her training.
• 2023 — Publication of Zandi’s Song.
• 2026 — Encounters around the ocean continue to shape her work.

Shaped by Water — the producer’s documentary

11th Hour Racing · uploaded 28 June 2024 · original English version.