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South Africa's kaleidoscopic 1,800-mile coastline is bordered to the east by the Indian Ocean and to the west by the South Atlantic Ocean, and is trimmed with first-rate surf breaks of every description. South Africa is also home to the oldest and best-established surf culture outside of America and Australia. 

The country can be divided into four main surfing regions: 1) The warm KwaZulu-Natal Coast in the northeast, anchored by the resort town of Durban, is home to a series of right-breaking reefs and points as well as dozens of beachbreaks; Durban's three piers (Bay of Plenty, North Beach, and New Pier) have long been the hub of South African surfing. 2) The rocky shark-patrolled East London area includes powerful Nahoon Reef. 3) The Port Elizabeth area, filled with cooler point- and reefbreaks, includes world-renowned Jeffreys Bay and Cape St. Francis. 4) The Cape Town area includes Dungeons, a terrifying big-wave break often compared to Maverick's in California. South Africa's best surf comes from Atlantic-born storms that move east along the Roaring 40s region into the Indian Ocean. 

While the central and west coasts generally produce the country's biggest surf, waves on the southeast coast are usually smoother and better formed. South Africa has ridable waves all year, but prime surf season is from March through September. Tropical cyclones can also bring snappy, short-lived swells to the Durban area between January and March. 

Shallow reefs are a surfing hazard throughout South Africa, but sharks are the biggest worry; 1998 brought a record-breaking 15 attacks (one fatal) on South African swimmers and surfers. Durbanites began riding homemade wooden bellyboards in the early 1920s, and Australian surfing champion Charles "Snow" McAlister gave Durban beachgoers a surfing demonstration in 1928, just as local surfers began making redwood boards for standup riding. But surfing didn't really catch on here until the late '30s, when surf lifesaving clubs began making 18-foot hollow "cigar-box" boards; even so, there were fewer than 100 surfers in the country when the South Beach Surfboard Riders Club, the first of its kind in South Africa, was chartered in 1948. Six years later, Cape Town surfer and abalone diver John Whitmore—often called the father of South African surfing—began to build foam-core surfboards and deliver them to Durban. 

When California movie-maker Bruce Brown flew into South Africa in late 1963 to shoot a South African sequence for an upcoming surf travel film, it was Whitmore who told him to look for waves in the Cape St. Francis area. The Endless Summer, Brown's movie, became a huge crossover hit, and helped put South African surfing on the map—thanks to the small but immaculate point waves Brown discovered and filmed at Cape St. Francis (known to this day as Bruce's Beauties). Surfers found that Cape St. Francis rarely showed the kind of form seen in Endless Summer, but they soon discovered Jeffreys Bay, another pointbreak, located just a few miles to the north. Jeffreys quickly gained an international reputation as one of the world's longest, fastest, best-shaped waves. 

Safari Surfboards, South Africa's first surf shop, opened in Durban in 1963; the following year, Safari cofounder Max Wetteland represented South Africa in the debut World Surfing Championships, held in Sydney, Australia. In 1965, George Thomopolous of Durban won the first competition held in South Africa, while fellow Durbanite Anthony van der Heuvel made the semifinals of the World Surfing Championships (held in Peru); the South Africa Surfriders Association was formed (with Whitmore as chairman); and Harry Bold of Durban launched South African Surfer magazine. 

Robert McWade won the first South African Championships, held in 1966. The Durban 500 international pro contest (later renamed the Gunston 500) debuted in 1969 at the Bay of Plenty, and became a mainstay of the world pro circuit. (International pro events have also been held at Nahoon Reef, Jeffreys Bay, and Dungeons, among other South Africa breaks; the 1978 World Amateur Surfing Championships were held in East London.) Port Elizabeth surfer Gavin Rudolph was the first South African surfer to win an international event overseas, taking first place in the 1971 Smirnoff Pro-Am at Sunset Beach, Hawaii. 

Cape Town power surfers Jonathan Paarman and Peers Pittard, along with Durbanite Mike Esposito, also proved themselves as world-class talents in the early '70s. Shaun Tomson of Durban then set out on a wildly successful pro career, winning the 1977 world title, starring in the era-defining Free Ride surf movie, and single-handedly reinventing the way surfers ride inside the tube. Michael Tomson, Shaun's cousin, was also a top pro of the mid-'70s, then moved to California to found Gotcha surfwear. Other influential South African surfers include Durban-raised Martin Potter, winner of the 1989 world title; four-time world champion Wendy Botha; '80s pro tour standouts Marc Price and Mike Burness; photographic free-surfer Frankie Ober-holzer; competition organizers Basil Lomberg, Peter Burness, and Graham Stapelberg; pro surfer-turned-photographer Pierre Tostee; ace water photographer Chris Van Lennep; and surfwear executive Paul Naude. Greg Emslie, Paul Canning, and Heather Clarke represented South Africa on the 2002 world pro tour; other top pros included Travis Logie, David Weare, and Simon Nicholson. 

Shaun Tomson went on record in 1988 to say that he was "totally opposed to any political interference in sport," but South Africa's race-segregating apartheid policy brought surfing and politics together like nothing before or since. Visiting Hawaiian pro surfer Eddie Aikau, after arriving to compete in the 1972 Gunston 500, was barred from Durban's whites-only hotels and turned away from a whites-only beach; world champion surfers Tom Curren, Tom Carroll, and Martin Potter (who emigrated to Australia in 1985) took an anti-apartheid stand by refusing to compete in South Africa beginning in 1985; South African surfers often had difficulty entering antiapartheid countries during the '70s, '80s, and early '90s. By the mid-'90s, with apartheid dismantled, South Africa again took its place in the league of surfing nations, but racial volatility remained, and a devaluation of the national currency made it difficult for South African surfers to travel abroad. In 1999, however, Cape Town Rastafarians Cass Collier and Ian Armstrong won the team event in the Reef Big-Wave World Championships, held in Todos Santos, Mexico. Collier, half East Indian, had once been forcibly removed from a whites-only Cape Town beach. 

As of 2003, there were roughly 50,000 surfers in South Africa, serviced by about 120 surf shops. The 1976-founded Zigzag was the country's most popular surfing magazine. Cape Town contest organizer Paul Botha inaugurated in 1986 the South Africa Surfing Series, a domestic pro tour; the United Surfing Council of South Africa was chartered in 1992 (renamed Surfing South Africa in 2002) to unify the country's disparate amateur surfing associations. 

A small number of South African surfing guidebooks have been published, including Hitting the Lip: Surfing in South Africa (1974), Surfing in Southern Africa (1989), and Surfing in South Africa (2001). The Timewarp Surfing Museum, located in Durban's Dairy Beach and the first museum of its kind in South Africa, opened in 1993. See also Cape St. Francis, Dungeons, Durban, Jeffreys Bay.

South Africa

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