The Radio Workshop:
Giving Young People a Voice

Fast forward a few years to 2005.  That’s when Kwezi won his first title, the National Under 18 Longboarding Championships.  Long boarding is “more chilled than short boarding,” he says.  “It’s more like cruising, taking it easy.”

Kwezi was the first black African to ever win a surfing title.

He is quick to shrug off conversations around race, saying that he gets tired of being seen as a black surfer “rather than just a surfer.”  Regardless, he realizes that it still matters.  When he started surfing he had no black role models to look up to.  His initial fears of surfing had partly to do with not seeing black surfers, nor black people swimming in the sea.  “I had to do [it] on my own—now that there’s other black kids coming up it’s great.”  He likes it when he has young black kids come up to him and say that “they’re going to grow up and be better than [him].”  That’s how it should be, Kwezi says.  It shouldn’t be about race.  It should be about making your dreams come true, whatever they are.  Still, he sees himself as a role model not just to black kids—but to any kid.

Kwezi has taken several surfing titles already, but he remembers the first one like it was yesterday.  His mom was in the audience cheering him on, and that was really important to him. She wasn’t too excited about him taking up surfing in the first place, he says.  “But she’s come around since the championship.”

He barely remembers what he was like back on that day when he first got on the board, and wonders if he would recognize himself.  “Back when I just started surfing I was quite scrawny.”  Surfing strengthened not only his body, but his mind too.   It has shaped the way he understands and relates to other people.  “Surfing has opened me up…It’s not a colour thing for me, it’s not a racial thing for me, I just hang out because I want to hang out.  I don’t look at your skin colour and say oh do you want to hang out?  I can hang out with whoever whenever.”

These days Kwezi surfs a lot, gives lessons for a local surf shop, and is busy studying for a business degree.  He hopes to get all he can from his surfing career, to continue to do competitions and take any other opportunity that comes his way.  He knows that there’s a life on the other side of professional surfing, one that he needs to prepare for now.  “Maybe I’ll open my own surf shop one day,” he adds.
Whatever Kwezi decides to do in his future, I’m sure he’ll give it his all.  Watch this space, Kwezi Qika is making waves.

Despite not being able to swim, 11 year-old Kwezi convinced himself that he was going to become a good surfer.  He soon caught the attention of Gary Kleynhans, renowned surfer and owner of Gary’s Surf Shack.  Kwezi told Gary about his dream, but that he didn’t have money for lessons or equipment.  Gary appreciated Kwezi’s enthusiasm, and agreed to give him free lessons.  Gary has taught many Cape Town kids to surf over the years, even if they didn’t have the means to pay for the lessons.

Kwezi says that Gary wants to get more kids involved in the sport, and that he sees surfing as a something that keeps young people in good behaviour and off the streets.  He taught Kwezi basic survival techniques, and got him comfortable in the water. Gary gave him a board and a wetsuit, and told him stories about competitions.

Kwezi made sure he was waiting in the water every morning before Gary arrived for their lessons, as he wanted to make his commitment known.  In the months following his first lesson, Kwezi quickly became a surfaholic.  Progressing from barely being able to stay afloat to becoming a terrific swimmer took lots of time, patience, and hard work—but it was worth it.  He surfed seven days a week, without fail.  His schoolwork certainly came first—his mother made sure of that—but surfing came in a close second.

Kwezi says that he’s grateful for Gary and his commitment to teaching other kids, because his life could have easily gone another direction.  His two best friends from before his surfing days in Muizenberg are now in jail.  These friends used to make fun of his surfing obsession, telling him that he shouldn’t get involved in “white” sports.  He should play soccer like other black kids, they said.

Kwezi says that he likes soccer well enough, but surfing provided him with a way out, with an alternative—it gave him a chance to see things differently.   And he sees himself as lucky.  “Surfing saved me,” he says. It made him “more calm, more passive, and more chilled and understanding.”  And that was only the beginning.

To be continued…

How Cape Town's new Greenpoint Stadium will look when it's ready for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.

One of the pleasures of being a journalist is the chance to find out, first-hand, how things work – be it visiting the construction site of Cape Town’s stadium for the 2010 Soccer World Cup [listen to the audio postcard] – or watching Parliament elect the country’s new president.

On this occasion, it was the opportunity to sit in the same room as the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) while it interviewed a long list of judges applying for positions in the country’s highest courts.

Not only is it fascinating to listen to the exchanges between members of the JSC and those applying for positions in the Constitutional Court or the Supreme Court of Appeal, it is still thrilling to realise how different this is from the repressive past system under which we used to live. Before 1994, it was unheard of that this process would be open to anyone who cared to come and observe.

Until South Africa became a democracy in 1994 with a Bill of Rights and a Constitution, the process of choosing judges in South Africa took place behind closed doors. Who became a judge was based entirely on political preference – it was all up to the Minister of Justice to decide who would become a judge and who would not. And in the years preceding 1994, the Minister of Justice represented the all-white, minority government committed to the policy of apartheid.

Since South Africa adopted a new Constitution and a Bill of Rights, the process of choosing the judiciary is the responsibility of a committee that recommends names to the country’s president who then has the final say. This is known as the Judicial Service Commission, which is made up of 24 members. These include the Chief Justice, the Minister of Justice & Constitutional Development, members of political parties, and senior lawyers and advocates.

At the hearings held in Cape Town recently, the Radio Workshop had the opportunity to speak to one of the country’s finest human rights lawyers, George Bizos, who is also a member of the JSC.

George Bizos - world renowned human rights advocate and member of the Judicial Service Commission.

We asked George Bizos to explain why it was so important for South Africa to change the way in which it selects its judges. This is what he had to say: 

      [Duration: 1 min 49 sec.]

“We had a very bad experience in South Africa because judges were appointed only from the white community, and only men, and only – in the last 40 years before the advent of democracy in South Africa – people who were supporters, in the main with a few exceptions, of the government’s policies. They really were no black judges, there were only one or two women who were ever appointed.

And they were appointed by the Minister of Justice and one never knew why. Because they were party supporters, or because they were golf partners with the Minster, or because they had a friend who was a friend with the Minister, but it was a process that was not transparent, that wasn’t there for people to see.

Because of that experience, we who were concerned with establishing a new type of administration of justice for democracy decided that Judges would be appointed and there were criteria. That they must have a legal qualification, they must be persons of integrity, and they should be persons who had shown during their lives that they did concern themselves with the affairs of the communities in which they lived.

George Bizos went on to explain that in order for all citizens to feel that they will be treated fairly and justly, it was vital for an institution as important as the judiciary to include men and women from different backgrounds and ethnicities.

This is especially the case with the highest court in the country, the Constitutional Court, and when it was being formed in 1995, its creators spoke about why diversity was so important.

Here’s George Bizos again:

     [Duration 1 min, 5 sec.]

And we believed that because the judges were only white and men in the past, that they should be selected on the basis of having regard of gender – that is men and women, and also the colour and ethnic diversity in South Africa, and to put it rather graphically …  if the person whose rights were said to have been violated, taken away from them, comes to [the constitutional] court and looks up, and there are 11 judges there, must be able to see at least one of them and say, ‘Hey, there is someone there that looks like me, has had the same or similar human experiences as I have had, and I’m not in a completely strange place, in a strange environment, my complaint will be given serious consideration and justice will be done to me’.

The entrance to South Africa's Constitutional Court.

A full bench of judges inside the Constitutional Court.

Twenty year-old Kwezi Qika has a lot to say about the waves at Cape Town’s Muizenberg beach.  The warm water makes for gentle currents and easy surfing. Winter waves are the best, as summer can bring harsh winds.  And when you fall off your board, Kwezi says, the beach’s soft waves cushion the blow.  It was on this beach that Kwezi first hopped onto a surfboard.

Kwezi Qika at Muizenberg Beach

The year was 1999, and Kwezi was eleven.  Back then he and his family lived in Muizenberg.  He went to school in the neighbourhood, and spent most afternoons skateboarding with his friends near the beach.  When his friends made the usual late afternoon transition from skating to surfing, Kwezi always chose to watch from the sidelines.  His friends tried to pull him in the water several times, but each time he refused.  Kwezi said that he wasn’t interested in surfing, telling them that “it wasn’t [his] thing.” And then came the day when he decided to take the plunge.  His friends came out of the water telling stories about waves they caught and moves they pulled.  “I felt so out of it,” he said.  He approached a friend and said “Bro, I want to surf.”  His friends were surprised yet excited.  They loaned him a wet suit and a board, showed him a few basic tips on the sand, and sent him on his way. In his first attempt in the water, he stood up on the board for about three seconds.  Kwezi said this meant a lot to him—he saw these three seconds as something he could build upon, as the beginning of something good.  Since those first three seconds, he says, he has been loyal and committed to the sport. In the weeks following his surfing debut, Kwezi went out surfing daily with his friends.  When the others would try to draw him out into deeper waters, he would refuse.  As Kwezi stayed close to the shore, he was hiding something from his friends.  He couldn’t swim. To be continued…