BRENTON WILLIAMS and SIZWE SAMAYENDE, Jeffreys Bay | Monday
ITS not great white sharks or even killer whales that terrify Jefferys Bays only black surfer – its racist white tourists.
Jackson Jacko Pennington is still shaken after a group of aggressive white Northern Cape tourists confronted him on one of Jefferys Bays most popular beaches over the festive season and accused him of stealing the surfboard he was using.
They called me a kaffir and demanded that I surrender my board. I refused, because the board was donated to me by white surfer friends, said Pennington. Things would have gotten really ugly if the police hadnt intervened.
The incident is the first racist slur that dreadlocked Pennington has experienced since taking up the traditionally white sport of surfing four years ago.
For most blacks at Tellsrus in the Eastern Cape where 28-year-old Pennington rents a back room for R60 a month, surfing is a sport for rich whites.
The equipment is quite expensive, but besides that, black guys say they are scared of sharks in the ocean, Pennington says.
He works for Supertubes Surfing Foundation and earns R50 a day to clean the beach and plant aloes on sand dunes.
We plant aloes to stop people from breaking down the milkwood trees and littering on the dunes. The beach is the best office in the world, he says.
The foundation sponsors his equipment. He says a wet suit costs about R4 000 and a surfboard between R1_000 and R3_000.
Pennington says he decided to surf when he saw how much surfers enjoyed it.
Most black people think that surfing is a white sport because its expensive, but its actually cool, he says.
Its even molded him as a person, he says, because he has had to cut down on drinking too much liquor and has taken to the principles of Rastafarianism.
Fellow surfers Koffie and Bruce Gold from South Coast Surf School first got him interested and also sponsor him.
Penningtons interests dont only lie in surfing, however. He also has a dream to build a shelter for street children in Jeffreys Bay that would be called Mama Africa.
Pennington is already getting sponsorship to buy the children clothes and schoolbooks.
It would be a small village where the kids could stay full-time and be taught how to live good lives, says Pennington. – African Eye News Service