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November 14, 2000 "There's Cemetery, there's 9 Mile and then there's Garbage," says Eeb Hajee as he counts off the breaks on his fingers. He's a local who can always be found in the lineup when there's swell running in False Bay. "Garbage. Now that's a nice wave," he adds. "Garbage?" "'Cause there's so much garbage on the beach, man," he says with a laugh. "There's a canal coming into it..." If you ever visit Cape Town, South Africa, chances are you'll never surf breaks like Cemetery, 9 Mile or Garbage -- no matter how perfect the waves. They're perched on the edge of the semi-urban ghetto known as the Cape Flats, which stretches deep inland from the Indian Ocean. It's been six years since the oppressive chains of apartheid have broken, but in these depressed parts, freedom doesn't mean much when you have nowhere to go. The shore of the Cape Flats area is littered with trash. Broken bottles lie like pongee sticks beneath the sand. Farther down the beach, there's a water treatment plant that has never been upgraded to facilitate the community's growing population. Raw sewage overflow pumps into a landfill behind the dunes and seeps through the sand and into the ocean, tainting the waves a stinky crud brown. For a few, the only upswing of living here is the coastline. And fortunately, the oceans surrounding the southern tip of the African continent are blessed with some of the world's best and most consistent waves. But surfing in these parts is no easy task. Boards and wetsuits -- no matter what condition they're in -- are extremely scarce in Cape Flats. "If you threw a couple of surfboards on the beach and people found them, they'd start surfing," reckons Jason Ontong, a local Rastafied Cape Flats surfer. "This one guy I know bought a surfboard and had two brothers, and they started going down to the beach, which you do in summertime, because it's right there. Before you know it, you've got everybody trying to surf on one surfboard. We were surfing, like seven guys waiting for this one board, in our undies, in the middle of the rain. Then these older guys who had been surfing 9 Mile for a while eventually gave three boards and two wetsuits to the whole group. That's how surfing started for us." "It keeps the kids out of trouble," says Rasool Hendricks, a 25-year-old Sea Point local who grew up on the Flats. "Once they start surfing, their whole focus changes from gangsterism and drugs to the ocean." "If I look back, I don't know where I'd be without surfing," adds longboard champ Jonathan Rosslind. "There's friends of mine, we were best of buddies when we were growing up. Today those same people are doing heavy drugs and are involved in gangs. They live in a different world now," he says and shakes his head. "Different rules, different values." Many surfers from these rough neighborhoods have made entirely different lifestyle choices based on their experience in the ocean. Some live almost nomadic lives, dedicated to the next 6-foot groundswell that will be rifling at their favorite pointbreak. And so an entirely new code of honor is discovered, a way of being that runs antithetically to the corporate mindset that is largely unavailable to the average Cape Flats surfer. To survive, some of these hippified Rasta surfers sell sarongs and fruit from informal roadside stalls. Others work half days in surf shops or run on film sets to ensure they don't starve. Work is regarded as a diversion, a necessary evil that must never be allowed to get in the way of a cooking swell. "That's my dream," says Jason. "Just to have an ice cream van and travel the land selling ice creams and surfing -- with loud music playing." Although surfing alone can never hope to cure the severe social issues of poverty, crime, bombs and rampant materialism, it continues to provide a positive alternative to the endgame of gangs and drugs on the Cape Flats. "I think the ghetto is like the manure heap that all the flowers grow out of," Jason continues. "At the same time everything's bad, everything's still really good. Life in South Africa is like that. It's what you make of it." -- Andy Davis  |
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