In 1963, filmmaker Bruce Brown captured what many still regard as the perfect wave at St Francis Bay. The endless pointbreak featured in The Endless Summer became one of surfing’s most iconic images and helped place this small corner of the Eastern Cape on the global map.

Sixty years later, much of that beach has disappeared.

Nobody set out to destroy it. There was no single decision, no grand plan and no obvious villain. Instead, a series of decisions accumulated over decades. Each one may have appeared reasonable at the time. Yet taken together, they altered a coastal system that few people fully understood. The result is a shoreline that now requires a coastal protection project costing more than R170 million in an attempt to recover at least part of what has been lost.

The St Francis coastline has become a reminder that environmental change often happens slowly, almost imperceptibly, until the consequences become impossible to ignore.

Just fifteen kilometres to the west, however, another stretch of coastline tells a very different story.

The Thyspunt coastline looks remarkably similar to the way it did in 1963. The dunes remain largely intact. The landscape is still wild and undeveloped. The beaches, wetlands and coastal vegetation continue to function much as they always have.

Ironically, this was not the result of a visionary conservation programme. Instead, the area benefited from decades of restricted access linked to apartheid-era nuclear planning. Land that might otherwise have been developed was effectively locked away, and in doing so, something rare and increasingly valuable was preserved.

Today, Thyspunt finds itself at the centre of another major decision about the future.

Nicholas Heinamann of Deep South Futures has written one of the clearest and most thoughtful examinations of the Thyspunt proposal and the choices that now face the region. His article explores the heritage value of the area, the economic arguments, the planning processes and some of the lessons that can be drawn from other large-scale developments.

Most importantly, it addresses a question that has received surprisingly little attention throughout the debate: what could this landscape become if the decision ultimately goes the other way?

It is a question about opportunity as much as development, and about whether there are alternatives that have not yet been properly explored.

It is a long read. It is a considered read. And for anyone interested in the future of the Eastern Cape coastline, it is well worth the time.

Thoughts From the Nuclear Fringe – St Francis Bay lost its beach. Thyspunt could lose everything