Surfing evolved along racial lines, one black and one white. Several pro surfers, including Potter, boycotted the Gunston 500. Momentum grew, and at one point, only four of the world’s top 30 surfers competed in the Gunston.
Finally, apartheid began to impact on even white South Africans. Visas were hard to obtain for professionals and surfers wanting to explore exotic destinations. Some South Africans pretended to be Australian or English to escape hostile cross- examinations overseas. Later, in the 90s and early 2000s, the sad by-product of this decade came to pass: a dearth in South Africans competing on the World Tour, with only people like Heather ‘Fergie’ Clark, Paul Canning and Greg Emslie having success. In 2003, Fergie was the only South African to qualify for the world tour.
In 1986, the country’s first full-time pro surfer promoter, Paul Botha, organised the Great Western Cooler Classic in Durban, the inaugural event of the South African Surfing Series (SASS) aimed to provide pro-am events that were a local equivalent of the ASP tour. Tommy Lawson won. Greg Swart was crowned the first SASS champion after four events.
In 1988, Craig Sims and Rob van Wieringen took over Zigzag magazine. Steve Morton and David Stolk – influential figures in the growth of black surfing – started Offshore magazine and Pat Flanagan started the broadsheet Wet, in Durban. Both lasted a couple of years. In 1989, Professor Mark Jury published Surfing in Southern Africa, the first comprehensive guide to surfing in South Africa. Sales of the book were slow initially. By the time surfing had begun to proliferate, in the 1990s, desperate surfers trying to get their hands on the book were horrified to discover that the publisher had pulped it after it failed to meet sales targets.
Surf shops were opening in coastal villages, inland cities and shopping malls. The first wavepool contest was staged at Shareworld in Johannesburg. The 90s kicked off with the release of Nelson Mandela. Never a surfer, despite his presence on wave-rich Robben Island for nearly two decades, the efforts of our master statesman helped to bring democracy to the country in 1994. A surf spot on the ocean side of the island, Madiba’s Left, was surfed illegally by a number of courageous surfers, including Cass Collier and Ian Armstrong.
Former Cape Times editor and old South Beach local, Tony Heard, recalls his pie-in-the sky plan in the late 70s to help Madiba escape by paddling him on a surfboard into the shipping lane. ‘The prisoners would often harvest kelp on the shoreline. I thought, hey, why not paddle quietly through the soup, camouflaged by the kelp, get him to climb on the board and paddle two-up out into the shipping lane to be picked up by a foreign freighter. Anything to get him out of South Africa!’ The plan – also mentioned by former Daily Dispatch editor Donald Woods, in his book Rainbow Nation Revisited – did not come to fruition. There was uncertainty about Madiba’s safety. What if the ship did not see them? What about weather and sea conditions? But it’s a nice thought. Imagine the subject matter of a dialogue between a white surfer and Nelson Mandela as they drift silently out to sea off the Cape of Storms.
Heard almost broached the subject with the famous inmate’s wife, Winnie. While Heard’s illegal interview with banned and exiled Oliver Tambo in 1985 brought him international recognition, failure in the Madiba paddle plan would have brought him a career-ending notoriety. Besides, it was unlikely that Mandela would agree to a ‘take-off’ into the unknown so willingly. It was a wipe-out waiting to happen.
The ASP introduced their two-tiered world tour structure in 1992. Talks between SASA (South African Surfing Association) and the non-racial South African Surfing Union were initiated, and a unified amateur body – the United Surfing Council of South Africa – was formed. Finally, black surfers were officially recognised, although unification on the ground – in the surf – was still to take several years. In 1993, the Gunston 500 celebrated its 25th anniversary. The first Ocean Africa festival was staged over 10 days on North Beach and Bay of Plenty. An estimated 250 000 people attended.
Zigzag magazine grew from humble roots in 1976 to become South Africa’s longest surviving and most popular surfing magazine. Under the stewardship of former South African professional surfing champion Craig Sims since 1988, Zigzag reached its 25-year milestone in 2001, making it the fourth-oldest surfing magazine in the world.
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