Peter Dickson
This week’s launch of the 16th Jeffrey’s Bay Classic, one of the world’s great surfing events, bellyflopped in a small town holy war.
Organisers Billabong decided to showcase South African traditional culture before an international television audience, and invited Xhosa traditional healers to bless the sea in an ancient ceremony before the top 44 seeded men and 15 women hit the waves.
Over the past decade, blessing the ocean has become a modern ritual for championship surfing events in Hawaii, Bali and Australia. Indigenous groups are usually invited to perform the rituals.
With major worldwide television networks converging on the Eastern Cape town for this week’s opening of the hallowed event, organiser Cheron Kraak said: `’We wanted to market our country globally.”
But vocal locals in the conservative, mostly upmarket “suburb by the sea” near Port Elizabeth, particularly the Jeffrey’s Bay Boardriders Club and reborn Christian surfing club Son Surf, were less than impressed.
Fundamentalist Christians in the small town, together with their brothers in baggies, slammed Billabong’s sangoma idea as a “pagan” practice and the Australian surfwear giant quietly put it back on the racks.
With four South Africans in the competition line-up for the first time, among them rising star Greg Emslie of East London, Billabong had wanted to give the event “a distinctly African flavour”, says media officer Brad Bicknell.
“But we got some good complaints and at the end of the day we wanted to run a professional event and keep everyone happy.”
Traditional healers are angry and disappointed.
Eastern Cape Traditional Medical Practitioners chair Solly Nduku said from Umtata: “I find it saddening that even after our fifth year of democracy, you still find people claiming to be Christians demonising all that originated in Africa.
“It would be better for them to pray to their God and ask him to help them catch up with changes in the country and globally.”
Nduku said no religion had the right “to dictate to people and undermine other religions”.
Surprisingly, dancing, that once most unChristian of activities, together with barefoot and bare-breasted maidens in skimpy skirts, passed the Jeffrey’s Bay Christian censorship test.
When world top seeds Marc Ochilupo, Shane Dorian, Luke Egan, Sonny Garcia and Mungo Berry head for the water this week, Xhosa traditional dancers will grace the shoreline instead.
The R940 000 Billabong MSF Pro, Jeffrey’s Bay’s major annual source of income outside the lucrative calamari fishing industry, ends next Sunday.