Get Shorty

Shorty in latter times. Photo Garth Robinson

Shorty passed away at Humansdorp Hospital. He was one of the original South Beach crew who lifeguarded and surfed in the late 1940s to 1950s.

Originally from Durban's South Beach, where he was one of a small nuggety band of surfers that included George Bell, Bruce Giles, Derek and Leith Jardine, Raymond and Anthony Heard, and "Chookie" Salzman.

He was one of three South African lifeguards - with Cliff Honeysett and Bobby Burdon - who hitch-hiked through Africa, fending off stone-throwing monkeys in the Congo, surfing at Alexandria in Egypt until finally introducing surfing to the English Channel island of Jersey in the mid 50s. He was a founder of the Jersey Surfboard Club in 1959, returning to the island 10 years ago for the club's 40th anniversary. He worked with Atlantic Waves surf school and inspired a generation of grommets with his boundless energy, love of surfing and tales of the Skeleton coast.

Shorty moved to J-Bay 15 years ago to run the Salt Rock Lodge. He was a fixture in the water and never missed a good swell, often hanging out at ‘the office’ under the Supers boardwalk with cohorts Ant van den Heuwel and Bruce Gold. In recent years, as his health declined after his beloved wife Rose passed away, he hung up his boards, but never lost his desire to hang at the beach with his mates and his beloved dogs.

Shorty will be sorely missed by all his friends and family in J-Bay, South Africa and the rest of the world. Rest in Peace Shorty, Hamba Kahle Mfwetu!

Best mate from school days Ray Heard: "Shorty: best friend, South African lifeguard/surfing legend, Shorty Bronkhorst, has died of cancer. Our dads never returned from the war; we were flogged mercilessly at boarding school by sadistic prefects and masters; we skipped cricket to surf on Durban's beach; we earned pocket money paddling shark bait out to sea from the South Beach pier. I became a reporter. He stayed on the beach, living the life I always wanted to live."

Tony Heard's daughter Janet: "What a sad day, I am sure both you and dad feel a great sense of loss. Even though I met him only a few times, shorty was a huge force in my life too, based on all the stories that dad would tell about him. Shorty lived the life that many people want to live, but are too afraid to. I last saw him about two years ago, and we chatted on the beach. I wrote about it for Wavescape at the time (see Get Shorty story below). He was diagnosed with cancer shortly afterwards.

Sunday 1 June 2008

Janet Heard goes on a mission to J-Bay to find out if a family tale about a legendary character is for real.

Get Shorty.

This was my brief via SMS while on a stopover to Jeffreys Bay during a recent road trip. The brief was not from my editor, but my father. Like John Travolta's character in the Tarantino film, I felt pressure to deliver.

The Shorty I was asked to get is Shorty Bronkhorst. He is one of few surviving surf pioneers who dropped out, turning their backs on the real grey suits and city bling. They moved to J-Bay, the surf mecca with the perfect wave. Some lived like ferals in shacks in the bush. Others survived on handouts. But they had resolved to live a dream - to surf their brains out at one of the fastest right-hand breaks in the world.  

When veteran surfers stop off at J-Bay, they often ask after these reclusive members of the surfing tribe. They make up J-Bay's hall of fame - legends such as Shorty, Bruce Gold and the late Ant van den Heuvel. They enquire about Cheron Kraak, the rebellious surfer girl who started her hippy rag trade brand Country Feeling in the 70s and turned it into a multimillion rand empire.

But Shorty is a legend in our family too. He is a great boarding school mate of my father, Anthony, and his older brother Ray. My dad would have a twinkle in his eye when he regaled my sister Vicki and I with bedtime stories of their pint-size, but larger-than-life friend from Treverton Primary and Durban High School back in the 1940s and 1950s. Each year, the "Shorty stories" got more mischievous. Some were XXX-rated and never told. Shorty had an eye for waves and girls, and was a master at scoring both. Shorty was no poser. He was the real McCoy and a stylish surfer, a resilient guy who, according to my dad, spent a lot of his time en route to the beach walking on his hands. I suspect that some Shorty stories were embellished, though like all good oral tales passed down between generations, one can never tell for sure. An almost mythical aura grew around Shorty. Sometimes my sister and I wondered if he was for real.

Today aged 70, my father still talks about Shorty excitedly. He has rarely chatted to him in 40 years, and their lives have taken different paths, but Shorty holds a special place in his heart. I think Shorty is my father's alter ego. He is the free spirit he would have been had he not got swept up into media, the struggle for freedom and the dreary reality of paying the bills. Although the two have no direct contact, the assurance that Shorty still lives the soulful, if not hedonistic life, that they lived as Durban youngsters - waking up, going surfing, hanging out at the beach - is what energises my father and makes him feel at peace.

Being the link between the two former boarding school mates, I had a feeling of dejavu when I got the SMS to Get Shorty. When I passed through J-Bay some years ago, I had the same brief. I tracked him down to a tiny flat overlooking the Point just a few swell breaks down from Super Tubes. We exchanged a few words, and together with his wife, we paged through photo albums before he dashed out with his surfboard under his amped-up arm. Our meeting was brief, but I knew then that Shorty was not a mythical person like Peter Pan. He was for real.

This time round, the place that Shorty had worked, an adventure tour operator, has moved out of J-Bay. I keep my eyes alert for him on the beach that runs along the surf breaks from Super Tubes. A new swell has just come in. The sets are huge and intimidating.

Slightly apprehensive about whether he is still in good health, I ask a few local surfers if they have seen Shorty. They assure me that he is around. I get the number of the Salt Rock Lodge Guest House overlooking the Point, which Shorty manages in exchange for a roof over his head. Next minute I get Shorty on the line.

He chuckles when I tell him I am a Heard and cannot leave J-Bay until I fulfill my dad's brief. We arrange to meet 90 minutes later in front of Super Tubes. I walk down to the beach. A sprightly, bald, sun-kissed man with a boxer at his side walks towards me. He is grinning. He is barefoot, wearing sunglasses, a white, subtly-branded surf T-shirt and shorts. We hug and kiss like family, and sit down on the sand in front of the aloes to chat - about the old days, about today, and the time in between.

He recalls the days growing up with my dad, "Ant", and my uncle Ray. He describes how they bonded as boarders at primary school over the loss of their fathers at a very young age. His dad was a dance-band sax player, Jack Bronkhorst (a legend, according to my dad), who was bombed in North Africa in World War 2. He was six. My grandfather George, a left-leaning journalist who enlisted in the Navy to fight Hitler, disappeared in the city while his warship was docked in Cape Town in August 1945. My dad was seven, Ray was nine. His body has never been found, the mystery never solved, although his sons have no doubt that he was assassinated by a right-wing hit squad.

Shorty is amused when I tell him how my dad idealised him. We swop notes about the legendary "Shorty stories". He recalls my dad's envy when the local "beaut", Norma Tayfield, fell for him. I remind him of the legendary tale about the "Iron lady", who gave him a lesson in Women's Lib in the back row at the movies when she swiped him with an iron she conveniently kept in her bag. Shorty had tried to grope her in the dark. We chat about the boarding school pranks, the grin-and-bear-it canings and a failed attempt at boycotting the hideous brown blancmange (the masters responded by not serving after-dinner "sweets" for three months). We talk about his extra-special bond with Ray - they were in the same grade, and how during the holidays, he and the two Heard brothers were among a group of pioneers who surfed South Beach in the late 1940s. If we weren't surfing, we were fishing, recalls Shorty. Then afterwards, they hung out at his mother Cherry's flat in Point Rd.

Shorty's real name is Leonard Johannes, "but nobody except my mom called me Leonard and nobody has been allowed to call me Johannes". His nickname stuck from Treverton days. "I was short then and I still am". Shorty succumbed to some conventions after leaving school. He became an appliance sales rep, got married to a dancer, Rose, and had three children. In 1984, he got a taste of his dream life when he left Durban and went to J-Bay to fish. A year later, he returned home, but the pull to J-Bay was too strong. A number of years later, he packed up his family, left his job and suburban life and dropped out in the coastal town where he has eked out an existence ever since.

He has taken foreigners on safaris to remote surf breaks and he has helped out at B&Bs ("but I don't do breakfast, if guests want breakfast, they make their own"). He has witnessed the rampant development and ugly commercialisation of the town. He has flirted with women, but stuck by his marriage for more than 40 years. Sadly, Rose passed away last year due to a botched hip replacement operation at a government hospital. He misses her, and a string of surfing pals who have passed on, including Van den Heuvel and Durban mate Baron Stander.

As we chat, we are interrupted every few minutes by the metronomic crack of a huge wave peeling off the rocks - and a surfer sweeping down with it. We are also interrupted by surfers who greet him as they head out at Super Tubes.  Shorty, one of the original J-Bay surfers from the 1960s, knows everybody in town, and is treated with respect by the locals.

I find it refreshing that this old ballie, who lives on a government pension of less than a R1000 a month and has seen his fair share of pain and loss, did not moan about his lot in life. Unlike the incessant whingers on the airwaves who have so much, yet so often have nothing good to say about anything, this madala played his deck of cards, made his choices and is just living for today.

And he is still surfing. He is back on his board - a 7' 2" mini mal - after an eight-month setback with his prostate. Mostly, he goes out at the more mellow spot, the Point. "I feel like a beginner again and I wouldn't go out today, it is too big," he admits as the steady eight-foot waves soar around us. But surfing is what gets him out of bed. A day does not go by when he does not feel the sand under his feet, always with his dog Chad at his side.

After more than an hour, Shorty invites us to drop by his spot for a drink. But in a gesture of laidback non-commitment, the invitation is open; he does not seek a yes or a no. "But if you come, bring your own beer," he says with a cackle. I watch him as he and Chad walk along the beach. Like my dad, for a brief moment a part of me wants to follow him on his free-spirited path.

Go Shorty.

Janet is currently on a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University, and is executive editor of the Weekend Argus