Since 1 December, the City of Cape Town has recorded 19 near-drownings and four drownings at Cape Town’s beaches. Saadiq Parker (25), a senior lifeguard with the Strandfontein Surf Lifesaving Club, was off-duty on Saturday, 27 December, after working Christmas Day and Boxing Day, but this didn’t stop him from rescuing four people at Miller’s Point Beach, near Simon’s Town. Parker was visiting Miller’s Point with his girlfriend and her family when he was alerted to a commotion at about 12:30pm.
Two young children (aged eight and five years) had fallen from an inflatable raft and were struggling in the water. “I was lying with my back facing the water and I remember telling my girlfriend, ‘I don’t like lying like this because it’s uncomfortable for me in the sense that, in my nine years working as a lifeguard I’ve always been told [to] never let your back face the water, because in those few seconds when your back is facing the water, anything can happen. Eyes should always be on the water.’ “And I literally finished saying that sentence when I heard a commotion [of] people shouting,” Parker told Daily Maverick.
He immediately ran to retrieve a pink T-buoy and entered the water. Parker said in the meantime, two adults had swum towards the children, but were now struggling to keep their heads above the water. “It became a situation of not one person, not two persons, but four.” Once he reached the four, Parker handed the pink T-buoy to the two adults, grabbed the two children and began swimming back to the shore.
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“Luckily, two members of the public came to assist me,” said Parker, adding that he handed the children over to the two swimmers who had entered the water. “As I handed over the eight-year-old, she started foaming at the mouth. I immediately started shouting to the public that they need to phone an ambulance because that means this child has swallowed a large amount of water – we’re going to need to start CPR,” he said.
After safely retrieving the two adults, Parker guided members of the public through conducting CPR on the eight-year-old girl. “After about six cycles [of CPR], we were able to revive her,” he said.
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