InterviewsUnridden 

The Dynamics of South Africa’s COVID-19 Beach Ban

To see a wave go by unridden is an almost painful sensation for any surfer. Now, to see a wave go by unridden and know that you can’t paddle out, you can’t do anything about it, that this and potentially other swells will be wasted...well, this is just ludicrous. It should be illegal.

And yet, from March 2020 onwards, this was the reality for many of us. Beach bans were agonising, regardless of whether one found them pertinent or pointless. They made surfers reconsider the value of [unridden] waves. They caused frustration, controversy, and divide.

This was the case across the globe. But it was a particularly delicate case in South Africa.

"In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the hard lockdown in South Africa in the first half of 2020, I took an interest in how surfing communities along the coast from Cape Town to Durban were responding to the “new normal” of the beach ban,” says Dr Glen Thompson, a Research Fellow in the History Department at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, author of a chapter entitled Dreaming of “Level Free”: Lockdown and the Cultural Politics of Surfing during the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Africa in the book Sport and Physical Culture in Global Pandemic Times: COVID Assemblages, edited by David Andrews, Holly Thorpe, Joshua Newman. In it, Thompson delves into the influence of surfing's non-conformist values and notions of freedom on the collective mindset of South African surfers amidst the pandemic, and how the May 5 beach protest against ocean-based activities shaped perceptions of surfer entitlement entwined with the history of whiteness and middle-class privilege in South African surfing.

Surf Simply caught up with Dr Thompson to unpack some of the main points revealed by his research.

This study made use of archival and ethnographic research methods, namely conversations with surfers and observations of beaches via webcam live feeds. Were there any specific pieces of information in the documents or anecdotes shared by surfers that shed light on the complex relationship between surfing, freedom, and the pandemic?

The title of my chapter “Dreaming of ‘Level Free’” points to a locked-in surfer sentiment from a pivotal moment in the midst of the pandemic. In the confusion of what was or wasn’t allowed by the government as the hard lockdown was softened to Level 3 (South Africa deployed a five-level lockdown system, with Level 5 as the strictest), surfers took to the waves at some beaches, including Muizenberg Beach, on 1 June 2020. Local surfer and journalist Steve Pike playfully punned “three” and “free” to capture the euphoria and uncertainty of surfers in a piece for the national news site Daily Maverick (his article was first published on the Wavescape website). Pike’s insightful take on the complexities of police enforcing the lockdown at the beach and surfers trying to go surfing during “our little endless bummer reality” captured the moment on that day and, I would argue, is a historically significant text documenting our recent COVID times from a surfing perspective.

In the introduction, you write: “Two months into lockdown, the historical racial and class divide was exacerbated; the largely white suburban middle class ‘want[ed] the opening of the economy and an end to authoritarian restrictions on their personal liberties’ while predominately poor black people sought ‘jobs, grants and additional welfare state interventions to support their precarious lives’ in the townships (Robbins, 2020).” To this theme, you later add: “While social media and online comments from the South African public were generally divided into for or against camps, many situated the protesters as white, privileged surfers disconnected from the social realities of the COVID-19 crisis. National media coverage also highlighted this social difference (...) ‘the surfer’ came to signify white, privileged entitlement and anti-lockdown discontent at the loss of civil liberties during the South African COVID-19 crisis.” Could you please comment on how this exacerbation of racial and class divides came to affect the surf community at large during and after the lockdown?

In the period that I was specifically studying for this chapter, which is the period from March to August 2020, the surfing community was fragmented as the lockdown forced people away from the beach — the place where surfer identity would usually be given expression — to the home where they lived. And home in most instances was determined by socio-economic status, or class, as well as race due to the legacy of apartheid and the racially segregationist nature of urban development before 1994 in South Africa. And due to that apartheid legacy, in most coastal cities and towns the predominately white, middle to upper-class suburbs are located near popular surfing beaches, while the black working and labouring classes live in townships some way from the beaches. The result was that the experience of lockdown, therefore, emphasised both class and race divisions. (Noting that in South Africa, as a result of its history, the term black has come to include persons of African, Indian and so-called coloured descent; elsewhere in the world the description of a person of colour may be preferred).

In coastal communities in South Africa, this generally meant that surfers in white, privileged communities with proximity to the coast had easier access to the ocean even when lockdown restrictions on movement, exercise or beach bans were in place. It was these surf communities that first took to the waves during lockdown. In addition, it was a well-known, but unspoken fact, that many surfers with economic means escaped the cities to smaller coastal towns to wait out the hard lockdown and find waves to surf away from the vigilance of social media and police enforcement of lockdown rules.

However, the politics of race that I was writing about focused less on divisions within South African surfing communities but rather on how the surfer, irrespective of their race or class, came to represent ideas that were framed as white, middle-class privilege and anti-lockdown — that is, as not supporting the national public health effort — in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. This idea of “the surfer” is located in a historic view of surfing as white and it is not representative of how the beach and waves have been transformed to be a more socially inclusive place irrespective of race, gender, class or culture since South Africa become a democracy in 1994. It is this trend towards an inclusive beach, and not the lockdown version of the surfer, that has re-emerged post-pandemic in the line-up among recreational surfers and in organised surfing’s focus on transforming the sport of surfing.

You note that the South African surfer responses to lockdown were in many ways similar to that of other surfing communities across the world, where beach closures and bans on ocean-based activities were also part of lockdown measures, but what distinguished SA’s case from the rest was “how the spectre of the past and present social realities politicized the beach in COVID times.” You exemplify this use of the beach as a site of political protest by mentioning the 1996 protest against the summer surfing ban at Surfers Corner, Muizenberg Beach and the Clifton Beach protests of December 2018. Could you please elaborate on the ways in which these instances are interconnected? And why is it important – both for South African society and the global surf community – to take a historical look at beach protests and juxtapose them with COVID-19 surf-related protests?

The history of the beach in South Africa is really a history of how politics and race relations impact a place that is generally seen to be a place of leisure, pleasure and access for all. In South Africa, however, that wasn't the case historically due to the racial segregation of beaches under apartheid. Beach apartheid, which ended legally in 1991, ensured that whites had access to well-resourced and safest beaches along the South African coastline. It was due to the history of beach apartheid that the South African beach has come to be associated with whiteness — a view which has washed over to include the sporting lifestyle of surfing. The two beach protests you mention fall within that history of white privilege and racialised ideas of the beach which, in itself, allows us to contextualise the protest against the lockdown beach ban during COVID times

In 1966, white surfers protested against the banning of surfing at Muizenberg Beach in Cape Town. At the time there were no leashes on the heavy longboards and the ban was put in place by the authorities to ensure the safety of bathers during the peak holiday season. The protest was not in itself successful as the beach was opened up to surfing again after the holiday season ended but it was the first show of protest by surfers in South Africa demanding access to the waves. However, as Muizenberg Beach was designated as a “white’s only beach” under apartheid laws, this protest should not be seen as a political protest but rather as the youthful constituency of the white surfing community pushing back against the authority’s summer beach ban at a popular surf spot. In short, the 1966 surfer protest emphasised how white privilege was associated with the apartheid beach.

The 2018 beach protests at Clifton Beach, a popular beach located in a wealthy Cape Town beach suburb, occurred in the post-apartheid context and highlight the persistence of race trouble in South African society. The beach protest was sparked by the residents’ association using a private security firm to clear the beach on a summer evening during the peak holiday season. This act was seen as targeting black people and the historic associations of beach apartheid surfaced as the discourse surrounding the event became more politicised. The continuities of the 1966 and 2018 beach protests with the beach protest of May 2020 against the lockdown, therefore, evoked the whiteness of the beach and the white privilege of surfers in a national discourse that has not forgotten the racially discriminatory effects of beach apartheid. It is for this reason that one should always contextualise when attempting to understand the significance of a political act at the beach in South Africa. In South Africa, the apartheid past continues to haunt the present, even at the beach.

Along those lines, whilst refusalist responses were prominent, were there any surprising or alternative expressions within the South African surfing community regarding the relationship between surfing and the lockdown? If yes, how did these contrasting viewpoints contribute to the overall narrative?

I use the term “refusalist” broadly to describe the privileged socio-political ideology of those surfers who protested the beach ban in person on 5 May 2020 or showed support for that protest on social media as well as those who took to the waves from June 2020 before the beach ban was formally lifted. In contrast to the refusalist approach by some surfers in South Africa to the COVID-19 lockdown, other surfers adhered to public health protocols and got involved in humanitarian work by supporting community-based feeding and social welfare initiatives in the poorer township communities hardest hit by the socio-economic costs of the limitations on movement during the lockdown. It should be noted that South Africa has a high unemployment rate, especially among the youth, and this was exacerbated during COVID times as most businesses were not able to operate or closed down. In this dire economic context, existing surf development non-profit organisations, such as the 9Miles Project and Waves for Change in Cape Town and Surfers Not Street Children in Durban, pivoted from surf therapy to food security programmes. Surfer activists in Jeffreys Bay and Elands Bay worked with local authorities to initiate feeding schemes for township families. Other socially-minded surfers were involved in community action network groups in and around Cape Town, providing solidarity and food security by running soup kitchens in local communities during the COVID crisis. While some of these food security surfer initiatives gained mention in the surf media or local news media in early-to-mid 2020, especially when a local top competitive surfer was involved in calling for donations, the idea of “the surfer” associated with protesting the lockdown beach ban in May 2020 overshadowed those surfer-humanitarian efforts.

Surfing is by and large seen as a leisure activity, but your study highlights its potential for political expression. How might this exploration of surfing's political dimension contribute to a broader understanding of sports and recreational activities as agents of social change?

Sports and recreational activities are socially and politically malleable and, depending on the context, may be used by participants, sporting bodies, fans and others to reflect progressive or conservative views or use sports to consolidate the social, economic or political power of the status quo. We have examples in surfing history of how surfing can foster social change and where surfers resisted social change. For example, progressively-minded elite professional surfers in the mid-to-late 1980s protested against racial discrimination at the South African beach by not surfing in championship tour contests run in that country while more recently, in February 2023, some elite surfers took to social media in a conservative backlash against the WSL’s adoption of a transgender athlete policy.

The May 2020 beach protests in South Africa that I focus on in my chapter are illustrative of political expression that was conservative in nature. Here surfing was used by a minority of white surfers from privileged class backgrounds to protest against the government’s beach ban as a lockdown measure. The beach protest was not a call for social change in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic but an issue-based call for the reinstating of a perceived libertarian right to surfing as a sporting and leisure activity. The May 2020 beach protest flew in the face of a public health crisis and at a time of broader public solidarity with the South African government’s stay-at-home lockdown measures (which included limited land-based outdoor exercise for three hours in the morning) that aimed to limit the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus between people.

Similarly, surfing is often seen as an embodiment of the connection between humans and nature. Did your research reveal any surprising or thought-provoking perspectives on the relationship between environmentalism, outdoor activities, and lockdown measures?

While I am not convinced that there is a direct correlation between the sporting lifestyle of surfing and a surfer’s environmental awareness, or even environmental activism, the beach ban during the lockdown in South Africa did create a general sense among surfers of how the ocean, or at least surfing waves, was fundamental to their surfing identity. It seems that during lockdown surfers’ desire for, and value of, the outdoors — that is, the beach and the ocean — was diametrically tied to their denial of waves. This was more of an individuated sense of psychological lack, expressed collectively via social media, than any real connection to nature.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unique challenges and opportunities for various industries and governing bodies. As an example, you mention how Surfing South Africa (SSA), the national surfing association, publicly distanced itself from anything related to the beach protests at first, but then also made appeals to the authorities to remove the national ban on ocean sports. With that in mind, what would you say policymakers and/or businesses can learn from the surfers' refusal to adhere to the beach ban? How might this influence future decision-making in similar situations affecting the surf community and industry?

For policymakers at the time of the early months of 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the question of what lockdown measures to put in place that were commensurate with how medical science determined the SARS-CoV-2 virus was transmitted between people, including in outdoor spaces. In this context of evolving medical knowledge, and where contagion was high and hospital beds were at full capacity, the best public health measure was deemed to close off all public spaces, including beaches, and limit people’s movement. If a similar pandemic context arose in the future, and the contagion effect of the virus was not fully known, then policymakers may well impose similar lockdown measures that we saw during COVID times. As the surf community, and I would include surf businesses here too, is an insignificant political voice in the sporting world and public sphere in South Africa, I would imagine that policymakers would ignore their calls for a return to the waves and put measures in place to ensure that lockdown regulations were enforced. So, in answering your question, it is not what state actors can learn from surfers’ refusal to adhere to the beach ban but rather for surfers to consider that their freedoms should not be privileged over others in the context of a future public health emergency.

Branching off from the previous question… Considering that this was the first near-worldwide surf ban, what lessons can be drawn from the surfers' responses to the lockdown in South Africa in regard to the interplay between cultural identity, privilege, and resistance? How do these responses contribute to our understanding of societal attitudes and resistance during times of crisis?

The argument I make in the chapter is that there is a clear link between the surfer's cultural identity, social privilege and the anti-lockdown beach protests. I attempt to outline the crisis in surfing's subcultural identity during the uncertainty and anxiety of COVID times as the indefinite deferral of surfing pleasure due to the lockdown beach bans. And this crisis came to a head in South Africa when lockdown regulations were relaxed in May 2020 to include some outdoor activities but not surfing or swimming in the ocean. But I would not consider the beach protests as resistance but rather as defiance, dissent or expressing grievances. Resistance is an act of resisting injustice and inequality (like the Black Lives Matter movement) or resisting a political system of oppression (like anti-apartheid activists did in protesting racialised sport in apartheid South Africa). The beach protests were about re-asserting liberal rights of freedom put on hold due to a global public health crisis; they were an expression of displeasure at the South African state’s lockdown rules. While the beach protesters were numerically insignificant, they were made visible on social media and gained a lot of air-time in the national press due to the surfers’ class privileges and whiteness. That media visibility resurfaced historic experiences and representations of the beach as a white space under beach apartheid. However, at no stage were the beach protests a political threat to the South African state. Rather, the political significance of the May 2020 beach protests was how the beach ban was mobilised within conservative anti-lockdown sentiment in South Africa that saw freedoms as under threat from state actors — a factor that also played out in other countries in the global North, such as in the USA.

Speaking of identity… In the paper, you quote Fiske (1989, p.64) on the construction of surfing identities at the beach: “The invitation to transgression in the every day is part of the embodied experience of moving from the coastal urban edge to the beach and then into the waves. Semiotically, this is a transition from culture to nature, where nature denotes freedom from social controls and cultural norms. This transgression embodied pleasure, “it creates a privatized domain beyond the scope of a power whose essence lies in its omnipotence, its omnipresence. Showing that life is liveable outside [power] denies it” (Fiske, 1989, p. 64). Refusal emerges here as an individualistic politics of withdrawal with affective agency analogous to libertarian impulses emphasising personal autonomy.” Applying this notion to South Africa’s COVID-19 lockdown, you explain that “[f]or surfers in South Africa, the beach ban closed off access to the ocean and the embodied practice of riding waves. As such, sporting pleasure was deferred indefinitely and social identities tied to the surfing lifestyle were shown to be unstable.” As someone who interviewed a lot of surfers on their perceptions and feelings about the beach ban, I was wondering if you could comment on some of the most explicit ways in which this “surfer identity” was challenged by lockdown measures and what idiosyncrasies came to the surface in response to the beach ban.

I guess the best way to illustrate this challenge during the hard lockdown period to the surfer identity is where stay-at-home surfers living close to the beach could hear the breaking waves and smell the sea air but couldn’t go surfing or, even if one lived away from the beach, knowing that good waves were going unridden during clean swells while one whiled away time at home. It was this experience of oceanic deprivation due to the lockdown that amplified the surfing lifestyle on a seeming indefinite pause during COVID times.

One distinctive feature of the May 2020 beach protests was the use of surfboards as protest placards. This illustrates how surfer identity was mobilised to express anti-lockdown views. Here the surfboard represents a technology used to ride waves that are redeployed as a placard board to take on a political meaning pointing to the grievance of being banned from surfing waves. But this is not a new use of the surfboard and is similar to how surfboards have been used historically as placards in environmental action to protest marine pollution or how Cheyne Horan placed the call to “Free Mandela” on the top deck of his surfboard during the Gunston 500 contest in Durban in 1989 to protest against racial laws in apartheid South Africa.

Looking ahead, what potential changes or shifts do you foresee in the surfing culture of South Africa or even globally, considering the impact of the pandemic and the surfers' responses to the lockdown?

There are possibly two considerations in looking back at COVID times. One is the reported increased number of people who turned, or returned, to surfing. In South Africa, as beaches re-opened, there were more surfers in the line-ups of the popular surf spots than before the pandemic. This may contribute to a sense of over-crowding at some surf spots or even a sentiment of further accelerating the gentrification of surfing — making surfing more mainstream — among recreational surfers. This trend may also drive an increase in surf tourism, and provide economic benefits to the surf businesses more generally. The other consideration is how surfing bodies, both amateur and professional, have needed to ensure that pandemic health protocols are in place to protect the health of surfers competing in local or international events. This move would be seen as crucial to enabling surfing bodies to continue running contests when government authorities open up sporting arenas during a pandemic context.

Finally, in the introduction you highlight that “[w]hile I am cognizant of pandemic histories in South Africa (e.g., Phillips, 2012), this chapter is not historiographic in its intent but part of a wider socio-cultural study on the beach in COVID-times attentive to subaltern and decolonizing trends within surfing in post-apartheid South Africa.” As a historian and surfer, what was the most memorable or rewarding aspect of your research? And how do you hope your work will contribute to the ongoing conversations and debates surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and its societal impacts, particularly in the world of surfing?

My research on surfing culture and history focuses on the socio-cultural factors shaping the sport and lifestyle of surfing. This chapter takes a somewhat different track from my published historical work as it focused on contemporary issues facing surfers during the early months of the lockdown in South Africa. Nevertheless, the chapter does attempt to contextualise the May 2020 beach protests as part of the history of the present within COVID times. My hope in undertaking this research was to document the lived experience and representations of surfers during the lockdown as part of the social and political history of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. It also contributes to the history, politics and meaning of the beach. It is here that my study adds to other studies on sport and recreation during pandemic times in South Africa and elsewhere in the world and how sporting or cultural identities are shaped by, or may shape, historical contexts. Yet, I don’t celebrate the logic of the surfing dream as my chapter is critical of how surfing was used ideologically by some groups to support their social privilege during a global public health crisis. I do hope that my chapter opens up questions of how surfing could be used for meaningful social change to promote social justice despite the May 2020 beach protests not fostering optimism in the possibility of that outcome.

The author and Surf Simply would like to thank Dr Glen Thompson for his assistance with the article. Those who wish to read the chapter in full, feel free to reach out to Glen at beachstudies@gmail.com.