he Making of South Africa’s Seaside Resorts: Pleasure, Health and Sport in East London

Seaside resorts are widely researched in tourism studies of Europe, North America and Australia. Much less attention has been given to resort development and the evolutionary pathways of seaside resorts in other parts of the world. Using archival material and existing secondary sources this paper offers a novel contribution on the making of seaside resorts in South Africa. East London is the case study. It is demonstrated that East London took on many of the characteristics associated with British seaside resorts. In charting the development directions of the resort from the 1880s to 1939 an important role was played by ‘local agency’ in terms of municipal actions. Further, for building the tourism economy the production of publicity material and promotional efforts of the South African Railways and Harbours organisation raised both domestic and overseas awareness of East London’s tourist assets. The initial anchors for tourist attraction were pleasure and health which were linked to sea-bathing. By the 1920s, a new focus is on sporting activities as an additional vital element of the touristic capital of this South African seaside resort.