Читать книгу Empire in Waves. A Political History of Surfing онлайн

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Just as Indonesian repression was written out of surfing’s popular grand narrative, so, too, was South African apartheid. For over two decades after The Endless Summer featured what it called the “perfect waves” of South Africa’s Cape St. Francis as the film’s apotheosis of surf travel (with, it must be noted, nary a word about the country’s notorious system of racial segregation), young Americans and Australians ventured to the apartheid state to enjoy its rich coastal bounty. Nearly all of these young tourists were white; surfers of color who traveled to South Africa, such as the Hawaiian professionals Dane Kealoha and Eddie Aikau, were denied entry into restaurants or hotels and were technically prohibited from surfing on many of the country’s finest beaches, which were reserved exclusively for those with fairer complexions. In the 1980s, a number of professional surfers decided to adhere to the sporting boycott called for by the global antiapartheid movement by forgoing international surfing contests in South Africa. The boycott movement generated considerable debate in the surfing community. Among South Africa’s white minority were some of the most accomplished surfers in the world, and the nation’s beaches had become globally famous for the superior quality of their waves. Nevertheless, to the boycott’s proponents, forgoing participation in the South African leg of the surfing world tour was a morally necessary step in opposing racial oppression. The boycott’s opponents, however, viewed such actions as an ill-advised politicization of what they considered an apolitical sport. Chapter 4 examines this historical epoch—a three-decade saga that culminated in surfing’s discovery that it was not in fact above international politics—situating the debate over apartheid in the surfing community within the broader context of modern sport and global affairs.