100 YEARS OF STOKE
Surfing rides centenary wave
Like all great stories, this one started with a boy and a girl — well, two boys and a girl to be exact. The year was 1919. The girl was University of Cape Town student Heather Price, who befriended two US Marines whose ship had stopped in Cape Town. The marines had with them two solid wooden “Hawaiian style” surfboards, also known as alaias. A photograph of Price on one of these boards is the first record of stand-up surfing in SA. The spot in Muizenberg (“the Berg”) where it was taken was dubbed “Surfers Corner”, a name it retains to this day. Two years later, veteran pilot Tony Bowman settled in Muizenberg and taught himself to build the Hawaiian “surf boats” he’d read about in a novel by Jack London. He was joined by Alex Miller and Bobby van der Riet. The trio became known as The Arcadians because they made their surfboards in a workshop behind the Arcadia Tea Room. Stand-up surfing soon became popular with both men and women. The women wore shower caps and home-made bathing suits with flouncy skirts. The men had one-piece swimsuits that wore out so quickly on the boards that canvas reinforcing was often sewn onto the fronts.
By 1923, wave riding at Muizenberg was entrenched and the municipality hired out boards to the growing influx of tourists. The strip in its glittering heyday attracted royalty, mining magnates and famous writers — George Bernard Shaw and Agatha Christie tried surfing here.
As the craze grew, swimmers began to complain about the proliferation of boards in the water, which led to a ban on surfing at Surfers Corner in 1965. The chunky boards then did not have leashes and weighed 15kg or more, making them lethal missiles if surfers lost control of them.
Surfers argued that bathers descended in their hundreds only during the height of holiday season, whereas the surfers were there all year round. Many defied the ban and carried on surfing wherever they wanted.
A number of local surfers, including attorney Johnny Pagden, president of the newly established Muizenberg Corner Surf Club (MCSC), paddled out into the line-up after the ban had been declared. When they returned, police vans were parked on the beach and
Pagden was arrested the moment he stepped onto dry sand.
Pagden recalls this vividly: “The policeman said: ‘I am arresting you for surfing illegally. And I am confiscating that board and putting it in the back of the van.’ I shouted to the crowd, ‘This man is stealing my board.’
“‘No,’ he countered, ‘I am taking it in as evidence.’ In the end I was hauled into the back of the police van with my massive longboard and taken down to the police station where I was charged.
“The case came up in the Simon’s Town magistrate’s court. I was represented by a friend who was an advocate, who argued that there was no case because there was no clear definition of a surfboard in the relevant legislation. We took along a board as an example, and fortunately the judge agreed and I was promptly acquitted. But the ban remained.”
Back in Muizenberg, things heated up for the young surfers and their supporters.
“It was quite chaotic,” remembers George Bunting, “The word went out like wildfire and every oke with a surfboard in the Cape arrived at Muizenberg to protest and take a stand.”
Sent to quell the protest was one Maj PG Badenhorst from the Wynberg police district, who was immaculately dressed, imposing in stature and ready for action.
“He told us if we didn’t disperse we would all be locked up or worse,” recalls Nick Hough. “Then along came our MP, John Wiley, and he spoke over a loudspeaker, urging us to please disperse peacefully, which we did in the end because it was an onshore day and there wasn’t much surf.”
The ban remained in place but rebels would still defy it and upon receiving fines would give fake names. Miki Dora, a famous Californian surfer of the 1950s, was a favourite alias.
“The authorities eventually realised it was better to give us the Corner and demarcate a swimming area further down the beach,” says Bunting.
In the decades that followed, Muizenberg’s golden age faded. The suburb’s wealthy elite increasingly spent their leisure time and money elsewhere as better bathing beaches became accessible. It became easy to drive to Sea Point, Camps Bay and Clifton.
And so the beachfront buildings of “the Berg”, once brightly lit and bustling, began to fade and crumble.
Surfers remained, however, among them Peter Wright, who opened The Corner Surf Shop in 1971, and Tich Paul, whose Lifestyle Surf Shop was established in 1975.
“When we opened up shop in 1975, there were 17 hotels in Muizenberg, the cinema was still operational and busy and there were all kinds of businesses still trading,” says Paul.
“By 1980 I don’t think there was one hotel left. Surfing wasn’t that big at this stage outside of the core group. In the late 1950s and all through the ’60s, longboarding was extremely popular. It lost its vibe through the shortboard revolution, then kinda got it back through Bay Surf Club in the 1980s.
“Bay Surf Club did amazing things for surfing thanks to Di Jacobs, Noel Jarvis and company. With close on 180 members their weekend surfing events would take three days to run, there were so many people. But other than that it was tough doing business in the ’80s.”
Walking the plank
Shafiq Morton, stalwart Muizenberg local and photojournalist, says: “Back in the late 1960s and early ’70s, surfing wasn’t a sport and it had the negative ‘beach bum’ connotation. There were not many women but I recall Pippa Sales and Margaret Smith, who both become Springbok surfers, and then Bernie Shelly who still surfs today.”
Shelly, still a Berg fixture at 71, says: “Those few of us [women] in the early 1960s were pioneers. We didn’t surf because our boyfriends or male friends were doing it. We did it because we were drawn to the surf just as much as any surfer is. Margaret Smith was the standout. Her ability to trim and walk was outstanding. She started before most of us and was simply more talented.”
Surfing has always been inclusive, and not just when it comes to gender. “There was never an issue of race or apartheid when it came to the Muizenberg line-up,” says Morton.
“There were signs erected on the beach that said ‘whites only’ but as surfers that never mattered to us.”
In the past couple of decades, Muizenberg has begun to regain some of its former glory. Paul attributes this partly to property development in the area and partly to the global surfing boom.
Morton thinks it helped that surfing became a family lifestyle. “Where do you take kids who want to learn to surf? The Berg! Muizenberg is the perfect place to surf, especially on a longboard. It’s one of the best places in the world to longboard because of the perfect bathymetry.
“And it’s probably one of the most consistent places in SA for year-round surf. You don’t get better all-round conditions for surfing anywhere.
“Probably the most profound moment for me was a few weeks ago, when there in the shore break I saw a black grom [grommet: surfing slang for young rookie] successfully completing air after air after air. It was just so beautiful to see. The point was that people were stoked not because of who he was but because of what he was doing at Muizenberg. It blew me away.”
Paul describes surfing, especially at Muizenberg, as “all-inclusive”.
“Surfing has never been exclusive across race, gender, class. I’m stoked how diverse surfing is now. From longboarding to stand-up paddling, bodysurfing to shortboarding. I mean, to have a local like Brandon Benjamin win the South African Champs is just such a stoke!”
As local surfing celebrates its centenary, two things are clear: the mellow, unassuming wave found beneath the Berg is timeless, and it was made for all.
There were signs that said ‘whites only’ but that never mattered to us
Shafiq Morton