A vast, arid, wave-rich shore that stretches for hundreds of kilometers north of Cape Town, the South African West Coast invites travel clichés such as “Last Wild Place”, “Forgotten Coastline” or “Untouched Wilderness”. While these descriptions may be true, they also fall short of conveying the essence of this incredible place, how it is under threat from mining, and why it needs to be preserved, a fight being led by a small group of local surfers and their allies.

Cape Town surfing pioneer John Whitmore embarked on a debut surf mission up the West Coast in 1957, discovering its best left point break, Elands Bay. Since then, surfers have scoured the coastline and found dozens of remote, fickle, closely guarded world-class secret spots.

West Coast regular and South African big wave surfer, Frank Solomon, became obsessed with this coastline from a young age. “Some of my fondest memories of growing up were surfing these waves and wild camping,” says Frank. “There are not a lot of places in the world where you can do that anymore.”

The “Real” West Coast

The coast between Cape Town and Elands Bay is comparatively populated and developed. It is only the remote area north that most surfers consider the “real” West Coast. Also known as the “Weskus” in Afrikaans, this mystical 500 km of coastline spans the provinces of the Western Cape and Northern Cape.

The least-populated region in South Africa, the West Coast comprises farms and scrubland, wide plains dotted with rocky outcrops, and hamlets populated by rugged, salt-of-the-earth fishers and farmers. But most of it is completely deserted.

Rutted orange backroads snake across the landscape. The monotony of these dusty gravel farm tracks is punctuated only by jarring cattle grids, deep potholes and thick sand drifts. Strange and exotic plants abound. In spring, blooming flowers carpet the terrain. Tortoises ramble across the road, wild buck graze on undergrowth, furry mammals scurry through the bush as birds of prey circle overhead, lizards scamper and snakes slither on the dunes, whales and dolphins frolic out to sea.

The West Coast is one of only five wind-driven upwelling ecosystems in the world, the Benguela Marine Ecosystem, fed by a cold current that flows north from Antarctica. It is world renowned for its biodiversity, including more than 4,000 plant species, including rare succulents and Fynbos, a third of which are endemic, as well as endangered fauna, such as the tiny speckled dwarf tortoise, the golden mole, and the black harrier, a noble raptor of which fewer than 800 remain.

Long beaches, stubby bluffs, pristine wetlands, ragged points and reefs fade north and south in the ocean haze. On a bluebird morning, a crisp land breeze grooms marching lines of Atlantic power, frontlit by the rising sun. Swells crash into the thick-grained sandbars on steep beaches or kelpy rock shelves, before detonating in plumes of white spray, as seabirds cry above.

The West Coast is not for everybody. It tests your resolve. Nothing is easy. A lack of freshwater or other resources means you have to carry everything in. Vehicle breakdowns are a crisis. The nights are cold, days are baking hot, even in winter. Venomous critters invade campsites. Flat spells and onshores abound.

But for some, that is the attraction.

“It's hardcore. It's windy, it's cold, it's misty. There are really harsh conditions,” says Mike Schlebach, 49, who, like fellow Cape big wave surfer Frank, has been drawn here since his teens. “But this place is magic. It is really one of the last frontiers.”

The Hidden Threat

In 2020, post-pandemic lockdowns, Mike embarked on a surf mission to a favored stretch of coast. Little did he realize this trip would change his life—and kickstart an environmental movement that he realized was urgently needed to defend it against the long-hidden threat of mining.

Mike attempted to access a world class tubing beachbreak that he had been camping at for years—previously visited by the likes of Kelly Slater, Carissa Moore, John Florence, and Koa Smith, and featured in several overseas surf movies and countless YouTube clips—that can handle swells of up to twelve feet.

But, at a farm gate leading to the beach, his progress was blocked by a sign: “Warning – Mining Area – Unauthorized Entrance Prohibited”.

A hard hat appeared and bluntly informed Mike that the area was prohibited to the public as it was an active mining site. Mike ignored him and pushed on, astounded to see large diggers, machinery, and massive holes on the beaches and dunes.

“I was pretty freaked out,” he says. “When I got home from that trip. I called up the few people who were starting to talk about this and offered them my services. I had no idea it would turn into what it has become.”

Mike had stumbled onto the Tormin heavy minerals mine, operated by Minerals Sands Resources (MSR), a company partly owned by South African investors, under a controlling stake of the Australian-listed Mineral Commodities Ltd (MRC). MSR had just been granted permission to expand its existing mining operations, in what was referred to as the “10-Beach Extension” under questionable circumstances.

Booting up his laptop, Mike found out that much of the West Coast is rich with heavy mineral sands. Beach and coastal deposits contain high concentrations of minerals such as ilmenite, rutile, zircon, monazite, garnet, and magnetite, which are used in industrial applications including pigments, ceramics, electronics and aerospace materials.

Beach access is a fundamental right of South Africans, but in many parts of the West Coast, the only route is across private farms or active mines. Minerals belong to the state, and companies can mine them by license, and restrict public access under health and safety codes.

Further north, diamond mining started more than 150 years ago, accelerated by De Beers, which today holds the largest stockpile of mined diamonds, from 1927. But now beach mining is rapidly spreading south, threatening not only public access to the coast but the sanctity of natural ecosystems, community livelihoods, and indigenous cultural sites.

While not all mining projects have lasting damaging effects, many do. Though it can provide a measure of employment, mining can negatively impact adjacent communities, most of which are impoverished and, in some cases, have been denied access to the traditional fishing grounds they depend on.

Other issues include illegal mining practices. These include the building of destructive rock cofferdams, which to date have destroyed at least three good surf spots in the Northern Cape with noise, dust and air pollution, plus the excessive use of fresh water, a scarce commodity in these parts. Another major problem is the inadequate rehabilitation of mining sites, scarred by massive craters and tailings dumps, some of which have now been there for decades.

Mike learned the entire coast was under siege from dozens of mining applications, doubly so when the myriad of oil and gas exploration applications offshore are factored in.

“You have got inland mining, you have got beach mining, and then you have got diamonds in the near shore and further out to sea. All these mining applications are being approved right next to each other, and the government is not taking into account the cumulative impacts,” explains Mike, who vowed to do something about it, though he was not sure exactly what.

Protecting the West Coast

Before long, Mike enlisted the assistance of a handful of concerned Cape Town surfers and started Protect the West Coast (PTWC). South African big wave riders Frank and Twiggy became founding board members.

“The mining companies have gotten away with doing whatever they want,” says Frank. “Holes and disturbed dirt everywhere. There are no plants growing there anymore, just a barren wasteland where there once was a beautiful coastline.”

The PTWC team grew to include entrepreneurs, academics, legal experts, journalists, photographers, designers, and environmental activists, most of them surfers. Operating mostly voluntarily with little or no experience or funding, they initially focused on informing the world about what was happening along the coast through media storytelling and public activism.

Mike and a small group marched on Tormin and handed over a “Memorandum of Grievances”. PTWC then targeted a dozen popular Cape Town beaches on a sunny Saturday morning, cordoning off sections of sand and erecting similar signs to those he encountered at Tormin.

Through digital media and the 2021 PTWC film Ours, Not Mine, the sordid tale of how the mining industry and a complicit government were exploiting the natural resources and people of the South African West Coast began to spread. Support for the cause grew steadily.

In 2023, PTWC expanded its activism into a third strategic pillar: the courts. They instigated legal action against one of South Africa’s longstanding mining companies operating on the West Coast, Trans Hex. PTWC secured a court order preventing the company, which PTWC contended has a poor track record of rehabilitation, from mining near the ecologically sensitive Olifants River Estuary.

This is South Africa’s third-most important wetland and a traditional fishing ground close to several quality surf spots that—like 90% of this coastline—have no formal protected status, so the legal victory was a significant achievement for the fledgling NGO, which earned PTWC considerable national publicity and a major South African conservation award.

By then better funded, well-resourced and battle-hardened, PTWC began to examine every mining application that came its way—by then a deluge, mostly prospecting applications, several every month. They engaged with the Public Participation Process (PPP) to submit informed comments and objections compiled by its lawyers and scientists.

PTWC publicized them on their growing media channels. Where previously only a handful of academics and activists had taken part in the PPP, for the first time in the region, PTWC’s campaigns increased public participation exponentially. PTWC then began challenging the authorizations granted to mining companies by the government that allowed them to proceed with mining projects.

No longer could the mining industry operate here with impunity.

Community Support

PTWC’s initial passion as surfers was at least partly rooted in a desire to preserve coastal access and to protect surf breaks along with the surrounding coast; but the organization soon realized far more was at stake. For the first time, PTWC united NGOs, academics and concerned citizens fighting mining on the South African West Coast under one banner.

Bonding over a shared love of the West Coast, PTWC has steadily gained the support of most indigenous tribal leaders and community activists. A summit hosted by PTWC in Langebaan, a major town on the lower West Coast, brought together more than 150 representatives of NGOs and communities to discuss strategies to push back against mining’s unrelenting onslaught.

In 2025, PTWC also launched Ripl, a revolutionary digital solution that simplifies the archaic and complex PPP, which was out of reach to many in the general public, especially local communities. Dozens of mining applications have been uploaded to the platform, which recently passed the 1,000-user mark.

These initiatives could not have been more timely. Since 2020, more than one hundred mining applications have been lodged, sixty in the first half of 2026 alone. Many are poorly compiled, make dubious financial claims, sidestep public participation, contain inadequate provisions for environmental and social protections, and have insufficient rehabilitation plans.

Despite these shortcomings, the government has continued to approve most of these applications, necessitating ongoing PTWC appeals. A noteworthy victory for the organization came in late 2025, when a mining application in the Northern Cape, co-appealed by PTWC, resulted in a negotiation that led to the provision of access to fishing grounds to an indigenous small-scale fishers organization that had been denied access by miners for decades.

The efforts of PTWC and others have also led to a small number of applications being refused, appeals being upheld, projects being cancelled, and most recently, a prospecting application on appeal being withdrawn by the applicant.

“This is proof that our vigilance and collective activism efforts are having a meaningful effect,” says Mike.

Out of Mined

This year, PTWC realized its most ambitious media project yet. Its second film, Out of Mined, is intended to bring the story of mining’s impact on the West Coast to a more global audience. Filmed over eighteen months, the film debuted in Cape Town in July to local public and press acclaim, and won a Cannes Film Award.

Directed by Arthur Neumeier of Eyeforce Productions, the film had a larger budget and a more expansive brief than Ours, Not Mine. Like many surfers, Arthur knew vaguely that the region had been affected by mining, but it took a trip there with Mike for inspiration to strike.

“Seeing the destruction with my own eyes and meeting the local communities made me realize that this issue was far bigger than I had imagined,” says Arthur. “At that point, I knew I wanted to make a documentary to create awareness.”

The film gives voice to the concerns of fishers, indigenous communities, scientists, legal experts, conservationists, activists, runners, and surfers. It also lays the foundation for a future comprising sustainable, nature-based industries, rehabilitation projects and tourism as economic alternatives to mining.

“We wanted to tell this story through communities, and the surf community is one of them,” says Arthur. “Surfers have a deep connection with the coastline because they spend so much time in the ocean. But this film is not just about surfing. That became one perspective within a much bigger story about protecting a coastline that so many different communities care deeply about.”

“Hopefully future companies can be held accountable for what they do," says Frank Solomon in Out of Mined, over footage of him pulling into solid beach break tubes, not far from Tormin. “If we can change it from mining into ecotourism, you could transform a lot of these towns. We have to start thinking about other ways to do it, and tourism is a great way to start.”

The Legacy of Tormin

The Tormin mine, where it all began for PTWC, was closed down in late 2024. Owner MSR filed for provisional liquidation in 2025, following years of declining profits and allegedly questionable business practices—including environmental damage that a local geological expert contends caused thirteen devastating coastal cliff collapses that destroyed 5.6 hectares of pristine coastline.

The mines closure caused hundreds of job losses. Vast sections of the coast remain unrehabilitated, with no discernible plan for what will become of this now-derelict mining site. Its surf spots and beaches are still technically out of bounds to the public.

Tormin stands as a clear cautionary tale of what can go wrong with mining on the West Coast. But this is also the mine that led to the formation of PTWC and all of the impact it has had so far and is set to have in the future—including preserving its untouched beaches and epic waves.

“PTWC is not anti-mining; we all use their products,” Mike emphasises in Out of Mined. “But we would love to work together with the mining companies and government on all of these sustainable and technological solutions, to move away from this extractive armageddon it is at now, to something really beautiful. That is what my team and I are trying to advocate for.”