News24 | 49 sweet summers: Cape Town ice cream man’s extraordinary career walking the promenade

Anthony Adams, who has been selling ice cream for 49 years, geared up for another hot South African festive season.

• Sixty-three-year-old District Sixer Anthony Adams has just celebrated his 49th festive season selling ice cream along popular Cape coastlines.
• Adams has been selling ice cream since the age of 14, and now sometimes gets to work alongside his sons and daughters.
• He shares the highs and lows of showing up and walking the promenades of the Cape Peninsula in the blazing summer heat.

Sixty-three-year-old Anthony Adams spends every festive season bringing cheer the South African way, by selling ice cream on beaches to provide relief from the blazing summer heat.

Adams was born in 1962 in the historic area of District Six. Its vibrant culture marked his upbringing before the forced removals during the mid-to-late 1960s.

“We were put out of Cape Town, so we moved to Manenberg, and I’ve been living there ever since,” Adams told News24.

This year, Adams celebrated his 49th festive season selling ice cream at various places along the Cape Peninsula.

He looks back on his younger years as a salesman with great fondness, starting out along the False Bay coastline.

“I started selling ice cream at the age of 14 at Muizenberg Beach, St James and Fish Hoek,” he said.

“Sometimes we had to go to Newlands Stadium for cricket. I sold ice cream at the cricket stadium and at the rugby stadium at Newlands.”

“Now I’m here at Gordon’s Bay Beach and here at Strand Beach.”

Adams spends his time pushing his cart “up and down all day in the sand” but remains grateful that he can feed himself and his family with the money he earns that way.

Overcomer of many challenges

Bringing the festive cheer comes with its challenges, but Adams chooses to remain committed to his craft of marketing and sales.

“Sometimes my legs give in,” Adams said. “Sometimes it’s good, like they say, fish is every day, but you don’t catch it every day. So today it’s a good day, maybe tomorrow it’s not a good day.”

Adams’ goal is to sell as much as he can to ensure he covers his various costs, which include an informal beach trading permit. “You must have a permit. And the permit costs, especially for the festive season, are about R2 867,” he said.

“That’s just for the month of December. Then you have to pay for January through February, March. But the off-season is a bit cheaper.”

Transporting his cart also presents challenges. “Sometimes I have to pay somebody to bring me here, and it costs me about R400 or R500. But now I’d rather take the taxi, because it costs me R68 from my place to Strand.”

At the end of the day, after Adams has pushed his cart up and down the promenade, he believes that there is so much more to the job, from the people he interacts with to the venues he gets to work at.

The upside of it all

Being a salesman has opened many doors for Adams and led to some of his most treasured memories.

One time, when working at Cape Town Stadium, Adams got to experience his favourite artist’s music live.

He always told his aunt he wanted to see Lionel Richie live, and when it finally happened, he thought, “The Lord can take me away”.

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“When Lionel came to Cape Town, I didn’t sell anything because I was singing.

“I was standing in the hallway there, and I was singing, and people were giving me money for singing.”

Adams also cherishes working with his two sons and his two daughters. He usually works at stadiums with his daughters.

“They also enjoy it, like concerts and stuff. We don’t pay to get in, but we get paid when we come out.”

And it doesn’t seem like Adams will be stopping anytime soon.

“I just love it,” said Adams, who will be gunning for his 50th festive season this year.

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