In photos: how Cape Town beat the heat
Frolicking at the beach, long trips to fill water containers, and children cooling down in Philippi
People enjoying Monwabisi beach in the sweltering temperatures on Wednesday. Photo: Dave Fisher
With temperatures reaching around 40°C, on Wednesday, people in Cape Town found ways to stay cool. Families rushed to Surfer’s Corner in Muizenberg to enjoy the public pools and the beach and learners splashed each other with water after school to stay cool in Philippi. Workers found shady spots to escape the scorching sun.
Swimmers at Dalebrook Tidal Pool at St James beach in Kalk Bay around 6:40am on Wednesday. Photo: Dave Fisher
Two cousins in Browns Farm, Philippi throw buckets of water on each other to cool off after school on Wednesday. Photo: Sandiso Phaliso
Members of the Strandfontein Seniors Fitness Club spent hours enjoying the Muizenberg public swimming pool. Photo: Dave Fisher
Monwabisi was full of beachgoers taking advantage of the safe bathing area on Wednesday afternoon. Photo: Dave Fisher
Learners from Mandela High School in Crossroads in Nyanga stopped at a communal tap, and filled bottles with water before splashing each other on their walk home. Photo: Sandiso Phaliso
City of Cape Town Expanded Public Works Programme contract workers take a much-needed break in the shade of a tree. Pictured from left to right: Wilhelm Wend, Bryan Arries and Marius Moerat, all from Ocean View. Photo: Dave Fisher
Sisters Isabelle and Susan Riley enjoy an ice lolly in the shade on their walk home from their morning church service in Ocean View. Photo: Dave Fisher
Residents of Haven View, on the mountain slopes above Ocean View, don’t have water infrastructure. Kaashief (he did not want to give his full name) uses a wheelbarrow to transport a 25-litre container of drinking water collected from his father’s house in Ocean View to take to his home further up the hill. Photo: Dave Fisher
Members of the Community Safety Ambassadors take a short break from patrolling the streets of Ocean View. Photo: Dave Fisher
Support independent journalism
Donate using Payfast
Don't miss out on the latest news
We respect your privacy, and promise we won't spam you.
Next: Joburg residents line the streets and cheer army deployment
Previous: Langa learners escape the heat in their “pocket forest”
© 2026 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.