“He claims I threatened to slit the throats of
white children and said, ‘The night of the long knives is
coming.’”
The pretty surf town of Jeffreys Bay, just off the N2
Highway, 75 clicks southwest of Port Elizabeth there, has
long played hard in the imaginations of surfers.
The long, not-so-heavy but challenging enough. righthand point
has hauled in some of the greatest performances in surfing history:
Tom Curren’s second-ever war there,
as featured in Sonny Miller’s 1993 film Searching for Tom
Curren, Filipe Toledo’s double-oop in
2018, Andy Irons, Kelly Slater, Occy, Mikey February,
Stephanie Gilmore, all of ‘em painting gorgeous timeless
lines.
The J-Bay Open was a regular fixture
on the tour from the eighties until 2023 when it was abruptly
pulled from the tour following Jamie Curries’s devastating claim
the contest had killed pro surfing and that it was an “an endless
drone of punditry, empty statistics, half-remembered anecdotes
apropos of not very much, tales of waves that were, been and gone
and meaningless.”
Jeffreys Bay has again come under the microscope after a black
surfer claimed he was told to fuck off and called what is
euphemistically referred to as the
K-word, a wildly offensive racial slur that has deep
roots in South Africa’s apartheid history.
Rasool Hendricks, forty-nine, said him and his pal were about to
hit Supertubes back in March when, they allege, local guest house
operator and J-Bay shredder Remi Petersen told ‘em to beat it and
allegedly used the ol K-word.
“I struggled to understand why he wanted to keep me out of the
waves,” Hendricks told the local press. “We are acquainted, he
knows I surf in Jeffreys Bay all the time, and I was very surprised
when he and some other surfers approached us and told us to leave.
The matter escalated and an argument ensued. At one state, they
tried to grab out surfboards. Then Remi (allegedly) called me a
k**** and told me to fuck off and go back to the location. The
whole thing was quite upsetting.”
Hendricks said he wrote a letter and thought about sending it to
the Human Rights Commission. It then went up on a chat group where
“other surfers of colour” were asked for their opinion.
And, here’s the twist.
“I thought the whole thing was behind us, but then I got a phone
call that I needed to appear in court in Humansdorp,” says
Hendricks. “When I arrived Remi was there with an attorney and an
advocate and I heard he was applying for a protection order against
me. He claims I threatened to slit the throats of white children
and told him, ‘The night of the long knives is
coming.’”
Back in 2013, photos appeared of a man, allegedly Rasool
Hendricks, baptising an Australian surfer in the water.
“When asked if he was indeed the
surfer depicted in photographs dunking another surfer, Rasool
Hendricks told the Cape Times: “The whole thing was a joke. It was
pure speculation.”
On a different post about the same alleged baptism, one
commenter wrote:
There is no place for violence
in the surf, not of this nature. Opinions about localism are mostly
a grey area, but putting someone in headlock and almost choking
them out while in the water is, legally speaking, assault with
intent to cause grievous bodily harm. It is typically punishable by
3 to 10 years prison sentence.
Regardless of whether the victim presses charges or not, I
think it is our duty as a surf community to make it known to him
that his behaviour is unacceptable and that he is unwelcome to
share the water with us. By this I don’t mean lowering ourselves to
his level of personal violence, but there are many ways to skin a
cat, as the saying goes.
Furthermore, I’ve also heard from many friends within the
surfing community, and have personally seen him being verbally
abusive and disrespectful to everyone in the water, regardless of
sex or age.
Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. Sheeeeesh.
So, anyway, Hendricks lawyers up, applies for a counter
protection order and, not real sure why, but the World Surf League
has sent their regional director Tasha Mentasti to monitor court
proceedings.
“Once the matter has been finalised
in court, we will make a decision on possible further steps for the
good of the sport,” Mentasti told The Herald.
Further steps unspecified.
