Tag: Africa

The Deep Duck Dive Podcast – more episodes

~ Glen Thompson

The Deep Duck Dive Podcast has three more episodes available to listen to. Co-hosts Karen Graaff and Glen Thompson chat about hydrofeminist and critical surf studies themes in surfing in these episodes: While we focus on surfing in South Africa and Africa, we also talk to global trends in surfing as a sport and lifestyle.

Season 1, Episode 5: Queering Surf Space – in this last episode of Season 1 we discuss the development of the current heteronormative culture in mainstream surfing, tracking its historical connection to colonialism, Christianity, and capitalism, and how that’s resulted in a space that’s often very unwelcoming for anyone who isn’t cisgendered and heterosexual. We then look at how queer surf groups have developed their own safe spaces, as well as how most mainstream surf organisations have failed dismally to do this. Case in point: we end with a short note on the WSL’s controversial decision to include Abu Dhabi as a stop on the Championship Tour in 2025, and what it says about their commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Season 2, Episode 1: Every Cape Town Surfer Has Feels About Muizenberg – we start Season 2 with a focus on Cape Town’s beach central, Muizenberg Beach. Love it, hate it, ambivalent, only when desperate, all-time favourite – every Cape Town surfer has an opinion on Muizenberg. In a bit of a break from our planned episodes, we’re starting what will (hopefully) be a mini-series chatting to local surfers about Muizenberg – their history and experiences at the beach, and their thoughts, feels and opinions about it, personally or in the context of surfing more broadly – in South Africa or globally. To kick things off, we chat about their own histories and experiences of surfing at Muizenberg, what they like and don’t like (spoiler alert: Karen likes it more than Glen), some history of the beach and area, representations of Muizenberg in films, TV shows and academic writing, and its use as a site for contests and as a drawcard for Cape Town tourism.

Season 2, Episode 2: Surfing About Comix Art with Andy Mason – In this episode, Glen interviews Andy Mason about his latest underground comix, Apocalypse WOW! Revisited (2025). While the starting point may be surfing and Muizenberg Beach in Cape Town, South Africa, the episode covers a range of topics beyond the beach, including how the past, present and future South may be represented in comic art.

Listen to all The Deep Duck Dive Podcast episodes here.

New critical surf studies episodes on The Deep Duck Dive Podcast

~ Glen Thompson

Three more episodes of season one of the The Deep Duck Dive Podcast are now available to listen to and we (co-hosts Karen Graaff and Glen Thompson) paddle out into the waves of social and historical matters relating to surfing.

Episode 2 is on the topic of The Waves Don’t Discriminate. In this episode, we discuss the issue of fairness in sport, and how a term that sounds neutral is in fact heavily politicised. We start with the definition of fairness in sport generally and then turn to fairness in surfing. The episode addresses the bans on trans women in sport, including surfing, and look to the gender politics behind those bans as well as the attempts by sporting bodies to use policies to regulate transgender involvement in sport. Listen to episode two of the podcast here.

Episodes 3 and 4 is a two-part survey the history of surfing in Africa. In Episode 3: History of Surfing in Africa Part 1: The Colonial Archive we focus primarily on the history of surfing in West Africa, which has colonial records of African aquatic activities. This history draws on the historical work of Kevin Dawson which explores, and reclaims, West African aquatic practices and we also speculate on what other historical sources scholars could look to when opening up the archives to find evidence for surfing in the past elsewhere along the extensive African coastline. We focus the period from the early modern period (c. 1500) to the beginning of the twentieth-century (c. early 1900s). Listen to episode of the podcast here.

In Episode 4: History of Surfing in Africa Part 2: The Modern Era we focus on surfing in Africa during the modern era, from c. early 1900s to the present. We cover the topics of surfing and the British Empire and indigenous African surfing practices in West Africa before 1945, the era of “surf discovery” in Africa in the Sixties and Seventies, and then the diffusion of surfing through the processes of surf tourism, non-profit led social development, and sportisation in Africa from the 1990s and 2000s – taking the story up to surfing’s entry into the Olympics in the 2020s. Listen to episode of the podcast here.

Listen to all The Deep Duck Dive Podcast episodes here.