Eyewitness Account

Monday 23 March 2009

A group of young surfers were enjoying fun, lumpy surf at Second Beach, in Port St Johns, when tragedy struck. Tim Whitaker, owner of Amapondo Backpackers at Second Beach, was there to witness the harrowing events of that day. This is his account.

We were surfing at Second Beach on Friday afternoon, with 16 of us in the water. By four pm, we’d been surfing for around two hours and there were only four of us left in the water. We had drifted into the middle of the bay. One of the local kids caught a wave. I followed with another wave, and decided I’d had enough for the day. As I was reaching the shore line, I heard shouting on the beach and saw fellow surfers shouting from the car park. “Shark! Shark!”.

I turned around and saw one of the younger surfers, Cebo, coming towards me shouting “Shark!” and paddling towards the beach. Cebo had seen the attack take place, the shark pulling Luyolo off his board by his calf, and then biting him twice in the water. Behind him on the next wave was Luyolo, about 40 meters further out. He was lying on his board, paddling on a foamy. I didn’t realize then that he’d been bitten. I thought that a shark had only been spotted.

I ran towards him, and as I got to him, he slid off his board and tried to walk towards me, but fell towards me instead. I reached him and helped him regain his balance. Sandy, another surfer, reached us and we put Luyolo’s arms around us and made it together to the shore. It was only as we neared the shoreline that I finally realized he had been bitten on his thigh. We got him to the beach, where we immediately tied his leash around his upper leg to stop any more blood loss. At this point Luyolo lost consciousness, and Sandy performed CPR on him. We detected a weak pulse, and rushed him up to the car park, using a surfboard as a stretcher. WE took him to the local clinic but the loss of blood and shock was too great, and he had passed away by 4:30. That half hour changed our lives forever.

This is the second death from a shark attack here this year. After Khanyiso’s death in January, Loyolo told his mom that he had decide he wanted to become a life saver. And he was back in the sea, swimming, the next day. He had always spent a lot of time on the beach. He had always loved the sea.

Today, at a meeting with the Natal Sharks Board, it emerged that the nature of the injuries made it impossible to know with any certainty what type of shark it was. All we can say with any certainty is that the bite size indicates a different shark to the one the killed Khanyiso earlier this year.

An online news article quoted wild cost gurds managing director, Khaya Mjo, as saying that the increased shark activity in the water was due to an increase in the number of surfers. This was dismissed as highly improbable by the Natal Sharks Board. We are all angry that we couldn’t save Luyolo, but perhaps we need to be careful not to blame ourselves. We need to figure this out and find a way to protect surfers, without blaming ourselves for having been out there surfing in the first place.

Luyolo was 16 years old, a scholar doing Grade 9 at Port St John’s junior school. He had been surfing for two years. He has an 11-year-old younger sister, Babalwa, and an older brother of 20, Luyanda. Luyanda was working as a firefighter, but has not left the house since Khanyiso’s death (the lifeguard who died in January, also from a shark attack). The family lived in Mthumbane Township with their unemployed mother, Nompilo Mangele, in a house shared with their aunt Nontombi and her four children.

Luyolo was a popular kid. We all liked him. He was known for his open, gentle and friendly nature. - Tim