Lizette Botha

Lizette Botha's relationship with swimming did not begin as a career plan. It began as a calling.

In 1989, fresh from the University of Pretoria with a BSc in Human Movement Science in hand, Lizette walked onto the pool deck of the Debbie Vorster Swim School in Brooklyn, Pretoria, as a newly appointed swimming coach. She was already a provincial athlete and hockey player who had represented her province on the field and track. She did not know it yet, but she had just found the thing she would spend the rest of her life doing.

It was at Debbie Vorster's school that Lizette was first introduced to the Self-Rescue Water Safety Method for babies. She was taught the method directly between 1989 and 1991, under Debbie Vorster's personal guidance. Debbie was the official Les Bébés Amphibies International License Holder in South Africa — Jean Fouace's appointed South African mentor — and had translated Jean's landmark book into Afrikaans. That translation had been prescribed reading at the University of Pretoria's Institute of Sports Research through the early 1980s, when Jean first established his network of license holders in South Africa.

Debbie Vorster and Jean Fouace would remain Lizette's two mentors in the self-rescue method for decades to follow.

Something about the idea of teaching a baby to save their own life in water connected with Lizette at the deepest level. It never let go.

In 1993, Lizette opened her first swimming school — Aqua Kid Swim School in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga — and ran it for seventeen years alongside her husband Arrie Botha.

During this time, Lizette did not simply teach swimming. She built an institution. She developed her self-rescue curriculum, trained a generation of swimming instructors who would go on to careers of their own, and served as Swimming South Africa's official Liaison Officer for the Learn-to-Swim programme in the Mpumalanga region — a role that placed her at the centre of national aquatic development during a formative period for the sport in South Africa.

One of the instructors she trained during these years, Irene, began teaching with Lizette in Nelspruit in 2001 — and in the early 2000s, under Lizette's mentorship, qualified as one of South Africa's very first Black Learn-to-Swim instructors. That legacy has continued for more than two decades.

In 2006, after seventeen years building what had become one of Mpumalanga's most respected swim schools, Lizette and Arrie sold Aqua Kid and returned to Pretoria — where everything had started, and where the next chapter was waiting.

Back in Pretoria, Lizette took up the position of Head Coach at Swimming Stars — the swim school bearing the name of Olympic gold medalist Ryk Neethling, one of South Africa's most celebrated swimmers. For three years, she led the coaching programme at one of the country's most high-profile aquatic academies.

It was a prestigious role. But Lizette had a bigger vision.

On the 1st of November 2011, she and Arrie Botha opened the doors of Kiddies Aqua Swimming Academy™ in Pretoria. The vision was clear from the first day: build South Africa's best swimming school for babies, toddlers, children, and adults — built not on reputation borrowed from a famous name, but on the quality of every single lesson taught.

Fourteen years later, that vision has become Africa's largest swimming academy, serving over 10,000 swimmers every month across 16 branches in two countries.

In 2014, after years of growing collaboration, Lizette Botha and Jean Fouace — the Swiss pioneer who first developed the self-rescue water safety method for babies in 1967 and who is internationally recognised as the "Father of the Self-Rescue Water Safety Method for Babies" — formally co-founded Amphibies Babies Africa.

This was not a licensing arrangement. It was a genuine partnership between two of the world's foremost experts in infant aquatic safety, built on years of personal relationship, shared values, and a mutual conviction that every baby in the world deserves the chance to survive an accidental water entry.

Jean Fouace visited Lizette regularly throughout their collaboration. A deep bond of professional respect and personal friendship developed between them. Together, they have built the most rigorous infant self-rescue programme on the African continent — one that has produced qualification float tests watched by parents who describe the experience as one of the most profound moments of their lives.

Kiddies Aqua Swimming Academy is the exclusive South African and African home of the Amphibies Babies Africa programme. Lizette is the only instructor in South Africa personally trained and certified by Jean Fouace to deliver the programme at its highest level.

The Amphibies method that Lizette teaches is a combination of the original Les Bébés Amphibies International methodology and her own techniques developed across more than three decades of hands-on teaching. The qualification standard she sets is uncompromising: a baby must float independently on his back — fully unsupported, fully conscious, fully breathing — for a minimum of 15 minutes. That is not a target. That is the minimum. It represents the time needed for a realistic rescue in a real-world drowning scenario.

Switzerland 1967

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South Africa 2014

Switzerland → Africa — Jean Fouace (Les Bébés Amphibies International, 1967) × Lizette Botha (Amphibies Babies Africa, 2014)

In 2015, Lizette received an invitation that confirmed what those who knew her work had long understood: she was operating at the very highest level of infant aquatic safety in the world.

Her Serene Highness Princess Charlene of Monaco — herself a former Olympic swimmer who represented South Africa internationally — and His Serene Highness Prince Albert II invited Lizette to travel to Monaco to assist with the Self-Rescue Water Safety Programme for their infant twins, Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella.

Lizette worked directly with the royal family and their children in Monaco, delivering the Amphibies self-rescue programme to the twin heirs of the House of Grimaldi.

Since that first visit, Lizette has returned to Monaco multiple times for projects related to the Princess Charlene of Monaco Foundation. She serves as the Gauteng Project Manager for the Foundation in South Africa — coordinating drowning prevention programmes in Gauteng's most underserved communities, including Hammanskraal, Atteridgeville, Soshanguve, and Mamelodi.

Lizette also serves as a Board Member and Project Manager for the African Children Aquatic Foundation (ACAF) — an organisation focused on making water safety education accessible to children across Africa regardless of economic background.

A combined feature on Lizette and Princess Charlene appeared in Finesse Magazine in 2017, highlighting their shared mission of ensuring that no child — in Monaco or in Mamelodi — should be at risk of drowning if it can be prevented.

What sets Lizette apart from the vast majority of swimming coaches is not only what she knows — it is her relentless commitment to knowing more.

In December 2017, she visited Josh Davis at Oklahoma Christian University. Josh Davis is a former USA Olympic swimming captain and Olympic gold medalist who competed in three Olympic Games. The two exchanged knowledge on advanced swimming methods — Lizette sharing her expertise in infant, toddler, and junior swimming; Josh sharing his knowledge of elite competitive development.

During the same period, Lizette paid similar visits to the head swimming coaches of Stony Brook University in New York and Olivet Nazarene University in Chicago — cross-pollinating ideas across continents and programmes.

She also visited Gustavo Borges and his wife in Brazil — both former Olympic medalists who run their own acclaimed swim school network, Academia e Escola de Nataçăo Gustavo Borges. The exchange of knowledge between two of the swimming world's most experienced practitioners was, by all accounts, extraordinary.

Lizette regularly attends international swimming conferences and seminars. Her philosophy is simple: the day a coach stops learning is the day their swimmers stop improving. In 37 years, that day has not arrived.

Beyond swimming, Lizette's personal drive is evident in everything she does. She has completed three Comrades Marathons — South Africa's iconic 89-kilometre ultramarathon, considered one of the most demanding endurance events on earth. The same resilience, discipline, and refusal to quit that carries a runner through 89 kilometres of mountain roads is the same quality that she brings to every lesson, every coach she trains, and every baby she teaches to float.