Dr Dude rides waves of SA’s surfing history
Escape from Hawaii conference leads to thesis on ‘spiritual’ sport
BIG KAHUNA: Glen Thompson, PhD, at Sea Point. He learnt to love the sea, and to surf, in Durban HIS friends say it was just an excuse to lie around on the beach. But for Glen Thompson, getting his PhD in surfing was a deep spiritual experience.
Last week Thompson received his history doctorate at Stellenbosch University for his thesis on the history of surfing in South Africa.
“My thesis focuses on the construction of surfing as a predominantly white, male sport and how females, and black people, had to find ways to the waves . . . It’s about beach apartheid, the changing patterns of gender-related issues, racism, consumption and commercialisation of the sport,” said Thompson, who lives in Cape Town.
“I was born in Cape Town, but I grew up in Durban. [Durban’s] Addington Beach is where I first fell in love with the sea and surfing,” he said this week. “Back then, in the ’80s, I would never have imagined that I would end up being a ‘doctor of surfing’.”
Thompson became a lecturer at the University of DurbanWestville after finishing his masters degree in history.
The idea for his PhD thesis hit him when he was attending a conference in Hawaii.
“While I was there in 1997 . . . I ran away from the conference to surf at the birthplace of surfing, Waikiki Beach.
“It was the first time that I used a longboard.
“I surfed out to a reef, and just sat there on this amazing 9ftlong board [more than 2.7m] and looked back at the beach and the Diamond Head mountain.
“And the strangest feeling came over me. I thought about myself, and my culture and how I came to be there, presenting a paper on something that I feel so passionately about.
“At the time, writing about POINT BREAK: Sharon Ngcongo was the first black surfer to enter the Gunston 500 competition the beach was just not considered mainstream history, but I though it was a great way to reflect on our past.
“In many ways I wrote a critical history of white privilege at the beach.”
Thompson, 45, said surfing was still to an extent seen as a white, male sport, even though this was not entirely the case.
“You have all genders, races, young and old, practising the sport. Beach apartheid legislation was among the first to go, in November 1989. This opened up the beaches and we saw a dramatic shift in surfing culture,” he said.
As part of his research for his PhD, which he began in 2009, Thompson started to surf competitively in the Grand Masters HANGING IN THERE: Cape Town surfer Cass Collier category while keeping his day job in mobile marketing, which includes surfing the web.
“I really wanted to understand how the rules of the sport worked and what makes a good surfer,” he said. “Now I probably fit in the Kahuna division,” he laughs. “This is a Hawaiian term for sea god.”
The thesis covers the histories of renowned Cape Town surfers such as world champion Cass Collier and his father Mohammed, as well as stories about less well-known surfing development officials such as Niezaam Jappie, Sandile Cyril Mqadi and Steven Jeggles, who were among the first accredited coloured coaches.
Also mentioned is Vanessa Kennedy, from Wynberg Surfing Club, a lone black woman on the pages of surfing magazines in the ’80s and ’90s.
It covers the history of Zulu surfing — depicted recently in the film Otelo Burning. Thompson presents evidence of black surfers in Durban and in Umzumbe, on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, entering the waves from the 1980s.
In the 1990s, as surfing development programmes gained momentum, some individuals were promoted through the formal structures into the mainstream competitive surfing culture.
Sharon Ngcongo, who represented a South African national team in Indonesia, was “acknowledged” as a “Zulu surfer” by Zigzag surfing magazine in 1996.
“This is by far not the definitive history of surfing. It is only a starting point. I hope that my thesis will start many more conversations,” he said.
“There are many stories to tell, and myths to address. Like the myth that black people don’t swim. There is definitely a thesis [to be written on] that myth,” he said.
As part of his PhD, Thompson became involved in organised surfing and is a juror for the Wavescape Surf Film Festival. He is also on the board of trustees of the Waves for Change programme.
In many ways I wrote a critical history of white privilege at the beach
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