WIPING OUT THE PAST

Black people now have access to water sports — like surfing, writes

My interschool athletics days went like this: Arrive at the sports ground completely under-prepared for the heat with no water frozen in a 2l bottle from the night before like the other kids, or any snacks. Hop on the bus; sing obligatory road trip songs to get into the spirit, yeah man yeah. Exit bus, take relevant place on the pavilion next to competing schools on either side like Lytellton and Uitsig and proceed to scream lungs out from the safety of the stands while the athletic white kids ran sprints and the more athletic black kids did long jump, high jump and relay but never got as much shine as the white Brandons or whatever.

It was a very stressful time. A lot of people, a lot of competition and a lot of singing the same songs on repeat like: Jam blikke, vis blikke, drie by drie. I still have no idea what it means, I am just glad it’s over. But here I am, 18 years since my last athletics day, sweating the same old stuff, but like, more. A lot more sweat — an ocean of sweat in fact, which brings me to my next point, surfing! Interschool surfing, because you know, shotput just isn’t enough of a stress.

Why do I care about the stress of interschool sports days that involve the freezing Atlantic Ocean and a massive slice of stacked foam and fibreglass which is hopefully buoyant? Well, because of the hope of a child and the thought of matching said child with a cool hobby like surfing is quite awesome. And since we live in Sea Point, the possibility of surfing as an extramural is a reality. It isn’t some far-fetched dream that a little me would have hoped for in an inland one-horse town like the one I grew up in. It is very, very accessible. So accessible in fact that kids who attend public schools like Camps Bay High don’t even have to seek lessons outside of the school grounds. But the fear is real, so, so real.

Then, naturally, there’s the worry of the segregation in the sport. Are there quotas for surfing? I stroll around the promenade often. I love watching the surfers. It’s peaceful and scary viewing all at once, and you know what they say? Those who fear too much to do, watch. I even spent an hour or two one day

watching a documentary about surfers who went searching for the perfect wave. Here’s the thing though, none of them were black. So I went looking elsewhere; elsewhere being the internet, the other kind of surfing, I am built for surfing webs and not waves it seems.

Ifound a famous black American surfer, Nick Gabaldon, who made waves during the Jim Crow era by surfing on a blacksonly beach. Sometimes Nick paddled out for 12 miles to reach Malibu where he was more accepted by other surfers (read: white). Amazing, I thought. What happened to Nick, where is he now? Judging massive international rip curl endurance competitions? No. Nick died at the age of 24, how? In the ocean, while surfing. His body was never found.

Fear found its way back into my pores tenfold. But there were some important takeaways in Nick’s story. Like the whole jabberwocky about the black body and water. You’ve heard these stereoptypes: black people don’t like to swim or black people can’t even swim so why or how would they surf? Well. Lies. They can, they want to and they historically would have, but access to oceans, pools and other puddles of water were highly restricted, the options were few and far between and the opportunity to dabble in water sports even fewer. They were restricted for the rich. No access equals no opportunity. No opportunity equals very few stories like Nick’s, but it does not equal very little skill. “Whites only”.

So I brought the search back home and found Cape Town-born Michael February, who is the first black African to qualify on the World Tour. Mikey has surfing in his genes. His dad was a surfer too and formed part of a black surfing community who sort of made it work — quite successfully — on the segregated beaches they were allowed to visit.

As a child I was

exposed to a lot of sports. Not athletics.

Sports. Top of the list: Tennis. But here’s what’s safe about tennis: your dad can hop on the court with you, train you, play with you and watch over you when the other kids are being mean to you.

There is absolutely no way on Oprah’s given earth that I am going to suit up in seal blubber and surf side by side with my son one day, ever. So, who’s going to watch him out there? The moon? The stars? Do those sky adornments come equipped with lifeguards sitting on their edges waiting anxiously to swoop in and save my son? I’m going to go with a hard no. But it pleased me to read that Mikey has experienced little conflict and racism in his own surfing community, compared to other SA communities, calling his peers open and warm people.

I suppose, at this point, that’s all I can ask for, that our child is embraced with warmth in the midst of the cold Atlantic where I cannot watch over him.

That, or just hope and pray that he takes up something safer but as cool which I can potentially join in for a little bit, like, well, I don’t know, kitten whispering.

Mikey has experienced little conflict and racism