In South Africa, apartheid defined public life from 1948 through the early 1990s. The system enforced racial separation at every level.
By the 1960s, much of the world had taken a stand against it.
The country was expelled from the Olympic Games in 1964, and international sports federations followed with broad boycotts.
South African teams were cut off. Foreign athletes were expected to stay away.
Surfing did not follow that path.
There was no strong international body to enforce a ban, and the sport's loose structure made collective action unlikely.
South African contests continued to run, and foreign surfers kept arriving, drawn to the long right-hand walls of Jeffreys Bay and the dependable surf near Durban.
For many, apartheid was treated as background noise, something acknowledged but rarely examined.
Some surfers went further and defended what they saw.
Randy Rarick, visiting South Africa in 1970, offered a blunt assessment after only a short stay.
"They're stoked working for the whites, and taking life with a smile," he said, as quoted by Matt Warshaw's "The History of Surfing."
"Can't see what all the fuss is about, everything is cool here."
His remarks echoed a broader tendency within the sport to accept surface impressions without questioning the system underneath.
Australian world champion Midget Farrelly took a similar line in a 1969 travel piece. He dismissed criticism of apartheid outright, writing that it was "not worth talking about because [everybody has] too many screwed ideas about what's happening in Africa."
He then presented his own version of events, claiming that "the government has protected the black majority," and that Black South Africans in cities "generally [thought] well of the white man."
In the same breath, he described violent tendencies outside cities, reinforcing racial fears rather than questioning them.
These views were not isolated and reflected a culture in surfing that preferred distance from politics.
By the mid-1970s, that attitude had taken on a more formal shape. Many surfers argued that the sport should remain separate from political issues. It was a convenient position, and a popular one.
Shaun Tomson gave this idea its most polished expression. He argued that sports could "rise above the politics of individual nations [and] bring people together."
The statement carried a sense of optimism, and in some cases, surfers did form genuine connections across cultural lines.
But the broader reality did not shift.
Apartheid determined who could enter certain beaches, who could stay in which hotels, and who could move freely through coastal towns.
The idea that surfing existed outside of that system depended on ignoring those facts. For visiting surfers, it was often a choice, sometimes a conscious one.
So, the surf kept pumping. The contradictions stayed just out of frame, at least for a while.
Cracks in the illusion
For visiting surfers, apartheid could be easy to ignore from a distance. Up close, it had a way of interrupting even the most insulated surf trip.
In 1972, Hawaiian big-wave rider Eddie Aikau arrived in Durban to compete in the Gunston 500.
Aikau was already well known in Hawaii, both for his surfing and for his work as a lifeguard at Waimea Bay. In South Africa, his presence exposed the rigid racial lines that structured everyday life.
Aikau was turned away from the Malibu Hotel in Durban.
The reason was simple. His appearance placed him outside the country's definition of "white." The rejection came even though he was an invited competitor in an international surf contest.
According to Matt Warshaw's "The History of Surfing," the situation required quick intervention from event organizers, who arranged alternative lodging.
Aikau ended up staying with the family of Shaun Tomson. Shaun, then just a teenager, surfed with him in the days that followed. The gesture helped smooth over the immediate problem, but it did not resolve the larger one.
Aikau did not stay silent.
In an interview with a Black-owned South African newspaper, he described what he had seen in direct terms.
"The color problem in South Africa, man, is really heavy... I fear walking in the streets."
His words stood in sharp contrast to the tone taken by others in the sport.
Bill Hamilton, who was also in Durban for the event, wrote afterward that "the situation among the dark-skinned people [here] is accepted... They are content with their working positions and the roles they play in society," as quoted in Warshaw's book.
It was the kind of statement that reassured readers who preferred not to question what they were seeing.
These conflicting accounts revealed a growing divide. Some surfers experienced apartheid as a distant abstraction. Others felt its force directly.
The same year, Hawaiian pro Jeff Hakman and Bill Hamilton had checked into the same hotel that denied Aikau entry, without incident.
The contrast did not go unnoticed.
It showed how racial classification shaped even the most basic aspects of a surf trip, from where you slept to where you could walk.
Passive awareness
By the mid-1970s, more surfers were aware of these contradictions, but awareness did not always lead to action.
Instead, a common response was to draw a line between surfing and politics. The idea was repeated often enough that it became a kind of shield.
Shaun Tomson expressed it in its most polished form, arguing that sport could "rise above the politics of individual nations [and] bring people together."
The statement carried weight, coming from a world champion and one of South Africa's most visible athletes. But even Tomson's position reflected the limits of the moment.
Surfing could create brief moments of connection in the water. It could not change the laws on land.
The Aikau incident faded quickly from surf media coverage. Competitions continued. Visiting surfers kept arriving. For many, the draw of perfect waves outweighed the discomfort of the political setting.
Still, something had shifted. The belief that surfing existed outside of politics was becoming harder to maintain.
The evidence was there, in hotel lobbies, on segregated beaches, and in the words of surfers who chose to speak about what they saw.
The tension would build slowly over the next decade, before breaking into the open in the mid-1980s.
1985 and the boycott that split surfing
By the mid-1980s, apartheid was no longer something surfers could sidestep with a shrug.
Outside of surfing, pressure on South Africa had intensified. Economic sanctions were growing. Cultural and sporting boycotts had become the norm.
Athletes who chose to compete there risked being placed on a United Nations blacklist alongside figures like Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, and Billie Jean King.
Surfing had largely escaped that scrutiny. In 1985, that changed.
At the Bells Beach contest in Australia, reigning world champion Tom Carroll announced that he would boycott the South African leg of the pro tour.
It was a sharp break from the sport's usual silence. Carroll had competed in South Africa several times. What he saw there stayed with him.
In his autobiography, he recalled a conversation that cut through any attempt at denial.
"The father of a guy I surfed with there once told me we were lucky in Australia... [because] all our Aborigines had been killed."
Carroll also knew of incidents involving other surfers. Dane Kealoha had been ordered out of a whites-only restaurant in Durban. Another Hawaiian surfer had been assaulted for speaking to a white woman.
Carroll framed his decision in simple terms. It was, he said, "a basic humanitarian stand."
The reaction inside surfing was immediate and tense.
The next day, at a banquet for the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame in Torquay, the issue exploded in public.
Shaun Tomson goes political
Shaun Tomson, now a former world champion and a leading figure in the surf industry, took the stage to accept an award. He had rewritten his speech that afternoon.
Facing a room filled with surfers, media, and industry figures, Tomson went on the offensive.
"Suddenly, the surfers have principles. Suddenly, we have political aspirations," he said, and according to surf historian Matt Warshaw, his tone edged with sarcasm.
He argued that if surfers began boycotting South Africa, where would it stop? Should they also boycott the United States for its foreign policy, or the United Kingdom for its actions in Northern Ireland?
"Where will it all end?" Tomson asked. "It will end with the destruction of pro surfing as we know it!"
The divide was clear. For some, like Tomson, the boycott threatened the stability of the sport itself; for others, it was long overdue.
Carroll was not alone for long. Tom Curren, Cheyne Horan, and Martin Potter all joined the boycott.
Potter's decision carried particular weight. He was South African, a rising star, and widely seen as the heir to Tomson's place in the sport.
Potter's perspective came from direct experience.
He had seen apartheid enforced not just in daily life, but in the water. He spoke about Black surfers being arrested for entering whites-only beaches in Durban. His account gave the boycott a level of urgency that abstract arguments could not match.
Journalist Phil Jarratt captured the moment in Surfer magazine.
"There was a time when sporting organizations could fence-sit on apartheid, but it has long since passed," he wrote.
"The ASP cannot win in South Africa. There is no forward position. Retreat is the only honorable stance."
ASP chooses silence
The Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP), led by Ian Cairns, did not agree. The tour went ahead as planned.
Cairns offered a blunt justification: "We don't have a political policy."
That stance held, even as conditions in South Africa worsened. In 1985, the government declared a state of emergency amid widespread unrest. International sanctions tightened.
The country's currency dropped sharply, reducing prize money at surf contests below the minimum required for official sanctioning.
None of it stopped the tour.
What did change was the atmosphere around it. More surfers began to pull out. Some magazines reduced or dropped coverage of South African events.
The boycott did not shut down competition, but it fractured the sport's sense of unity.
For the first time, apartheid was not a distant issue in surfing. It was a dividing line, running through contest sites, magazine pages, and the careers of the surfers themselves.
Quiet protests and the changing lineup
After 1985, the boycott did not shut down surfing in South Africa, but it changed the tone of the sport.
The arguments had been made in public. The divisions were clear. What followed was less dramatic, but no less telling.
Some surfers who had supported the boycott stayed away. Others returned, sometimes with gestures that hinted at unease.
In 1986, Cheyne Horan arrived in South Africa with a message written across his surfboard: "Free Mandela."
The slogan referred to Nelson Mandela, who at the time was still imprisoned after more than two decades.
Horan's act caused a stir. It was visible, impossible to ignore, and unusual in a sport that had long preferred silence.
The professional tour, however, continued its annual visits. The ASP held its line.
Boycotts and civil rights movements explode
Even as more surfers opted out, enough competitors showed up to keep the events running. Prize money remained low. International attention was uneven.
Some surf magazines, including Surfer, began to step back from covering South African contests altogether.
Inside the country, a different shift was taking place.
Surfing under apartheid had always been segregated, like everything else. Beaches were divided by race, and access was tightly controlled.
Black surfers faced restrictions that went far beyond competition. In some cases, they risked arrest simply for entering the water at the wrong place.
That reality, described by Martin Potter during the boycott debate, remained in place through much of the 1980s.
By the end of the decade, new efforts were emerging to challenge that system from within.
The nonracial South African Surfing Union was formed to create opportunities for surfers excluded by apartheid laws.
One of its early standouts was Cass Collier, a young regular-footer from Cape Town. Collier was the son of one of the country's first Black surfers, and his presence on the competitive scene marked a break from the past.
In 1989, Collier became South Africa's first nonwhite surfer to compete on the ASP world tour. It was a small moment in global terms, but a significant one inside the sport.
For decades, international contests in South Africa had taken place against a backdrop of exclusion. Collier's entry did not erase that history, but it pointed toward something different.
The contradictions, however, did not disappear.
Some surfers continued to argue that boycotts were ineffective. In 1990, American pro Wes Laine spoke openly about his decision to compete in South Africa.
"I loved South Africa, [and] couldn't not go there, because the waves are just too good," he told Surfing magazine.
He dismissed the idea that a boycott could influence politics, saying it would not have "any impact... period."
The death of apartheid
Laine's comments followed him.
Later that year, he was scheduled to compete in a contest in Barbados, a country with strong ties to the anti-apartheid movement.
After his remarks became known, event organizers refused him entry. The backlash surprised him. He responded with anger, threatening to organize a boycott of his own.
The episode showed how much the landscape had shifted. A few years earlier, such comments might have passed without notice.
By 1990, they carried consequences.
Through all of this, surfing's long-standing belief in its own separation from politics continued to erode. Writers inside the sport had already begun to question that idea.
In 1984, surf journalist Brian Gillogly described surfing as a temporary escape.
"It is only within the act of riding the wave that the surfer... loses his shackles. Once he sets foot back on terra firma, the whole mess begins."
The "mess" had always been there. During the apartheid years, surfing simply took longer than most sports to confront it.
By the early 1990s, the system that shaped these tensions was beginning to collapse.
Apartheid laws were dismantled. Nelson Mandela was released from prison. International sanctions began to lift.
Surfing, like the rest of the sporting world, moved into a new era, carrying with it the memory of a time when perfect waves broke alongside deep injustice.
Words by Luís MP | Founder of SurferToday.com
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