Fifteen rebel yells fill the bay, rising above the roar of a solid southern ocean swell. It is as clear as cut glass, and people in the parking lot chuckle.
The sun is flooding the fun zone, the sky is azure. This is Nahoon Corner on Friday morning November 21.
This date is significant because we are in the height of local summer.
And we do have a big protest in town today by women who wear purple and black — how those who are lucky to survive the beating look in this violent world of toxic patriarchy.
For this is what underlies the refrain “GBV” (gender-based violence) repeated — if not trotted out — so often by politicians that the actual meaning of what is happening becomes dumbed down.
But toxic patriarchy — now that is not a term bandied about at all, for that would open up a tyranny too close and sensitive for many in power to handle. Add toxic masculinity and now there is a loud protest from those who doth protest too much.
Gender power relations are complex and tricky.
Many have heard the term “misogynistic” used to describe men who have it in for women.
Unfortunately, there is also the Greek word “misandrist” — a person who hates men.
I chuck this in simply to illustrate how complex and weird society can be.
It is a day when hundreds of women finally put to good use the aptly named Leighandre “Baby Lee” Jegels recreational park at the Esplanade — named after a boxer and karate champion who was shot and killed by her police officer boyfriend in East London during Women’s Month in 2019.
After the long march, these women and their compadre men joined a national protest where women were asked to stop working at noon and lie down for 15 minutes.
A prosecutor friend once told me that amid too many matters fuelled by drunken jealous rage, there was no mistaking the cases of gender-based violence.
When confronted with the statistics, SA today is in a crisis of genuine gender-based violation after violation.
I have two daughters and I want them to fight for their lives even though I may demand in journalism the professional adherence to some sort of the Socratic method — all facts and claims no matter how compelling must be questioned.
It’s a simple quest for truth or the closest we can get to it.
For truth is far more radical and militant than cheap propaganda and hubris.
And this is why our city’s women protesters making their incredible march and statement carried gravitas.
You know they speak from the heart, from experience. They carry a greater truth.
They also happen to be resuscitating the essence of what remains of our deeply gored and abused new constitution.
Back on the beach at Nahoon Corner, I spot, not a misandrist, but a man slightly out of place.
He gaily grasps his boogie board and heads into the surf where scores of others are revelling in the waves.
Oke, I say, this is the Nahoon Granny Grommets. But in he goes and I wonder how it goes.
My concern is swept away by the loud cheers and yells from the sea.
I look up and here are these 15 women over 50 all on one double up, feisty, foamy frother.
When one wave comes up and overtakes another, there is an instant rush of speed and a burst of energy.
It engulfs them and then these amazing women are shot out into open space, caught up again and given the ride of their lives.
Thirty-five years ago, I turned off the bottom of a gnarly, “six-to eight-foot” mustard-coloured storm swell at Bruce’s Beauties at St Francis and at that moment it doubled up.
The wave warped and the lip threw into the sky. The righthand rail of the board literally fell into space, bit again and I was swallowed up for a moment of eternity in the tube, before being spat out.
These women, are discovering the euphoria of bezonkers ocean atoms at a later stage of life. Yet, I imagine they are going through the exact same feeling.
It’s a kind of exaltation.
And wragtig, I happen to speak to one of those riders minutes later.
“It was so strong, there were just boards and bodies flying over each other, and then we were shoved out at speed.
“It took us right up the beach onto the sand. I was so stoked.”
While we fight back against the disgraceful forces of violence and hatred lined up against women and children in a time of Epstein and fake malignant narcissistic politics, it’s also good to open the window and let the foul vapours out and the new season in.
The climate stove is on warm and toasty, the wind is offshore — from the southwest.
It’s cool and clean and clear. The swell has arrived from 7,000km away in long, glittering lines. The spray as giants peak on Gonubie’s left-hand reef is a perfect semicircle of fresh Arctic white.
The water is crisp, not cold, not warm, just perfect.
It’s our secret summer. Can you feel the year winding down? The time that is ours is at hand. Take it right now.
For this is what underlies the refrain “GBV” (gender-based violence) repeated — if not trotted out — so often by politicians that the actual meaning of what is happening becomes dumbed down.But toxic patriarchy — now that is not a term bandied about at all, for that would open up a tyranny too close and sensitive for many in power to handle.
