Selema Masekela
By Dan Charles
The essence of the spirit of surfing is maybe best exemplified by the paddle-out - a ceremony that honours the life and legacy of someone from within a surfing community that has passed on. The ceremony is carried out through surfers paddling out (as the name would suggest) into the ocean together, often carrying flowers either on their boards or in their teeth, until reaching a spot where they are able gently float atop the water in the formation of a circle. There, the surfers will either say a few words of remembrance, splash around some water or simply join hands and allow themselves to be held by the ocean while they hold each other’s grief. Isn’t that something?
In June 2020, surfers from all across the North County region of San Diego, California gathered at Moonlight Beach for a paddle-out that had been organised in response to the murder of George Floyd committed by police officers in Minneapolis. The gathering was called to honour the Black lives that had been taken by acts of police brutality but it also served as a call for Black surfers to come together en masse and hold their presence within a space and a culture that was for a long time prohibited
The image of surfing that has been perpetuated throughout most of modern day popular culture - the blond haired and blue eyed image - is one that has been constructed upon the foundations of systemic racism within America. Redlining is a discriminatory practice where financial services, such as mortgages, insurance, and loans, are systematically denied to residents of certain areas based on their race or ethnicity. This practice originated in the 1930s when the federal government, through programs like the Federal Housing Administration, drew red lines around minority neighbourhoods and deemed them "hazardous" or "dangerous" for investment. As a result, residents of these redlined areas were unable to access credit and other financial services, perpetuating racial and economic inequalities. Redlining has had long-lasting impacts, leading to lower home ownership rates, wealth disparities, and other detrimental effects in minority communities.
“I speak for all the surfers that happen to be Black,” Masekela said. “We’ve known and experienced challenges in this community that would probably shock you. It’s been very hard for people to perceive perhaps that people who don’t look like them could love the ocean as much as they do… I look out on this crowd and I’m reminded of the North County that showed me shelter and love, and helped me navigate any of the challenges I may have experienced by ignorant people that just didn’t get it because that’s not what surfing is about.”
Selema Masekela is one of the most significant and influential voices in entertainment and action sports today. As a teenager, he cultivated a love and a knack for skateboarding, snowboarding and surfing which led him to being enveloped within the communities that surrounded those sports in California. From there, he began earning his ascension within the ranks of the action sports industry by working as a receptionist for the renowned TransWorld skateboarding magazine while making a name for himself as a commentator for various surf, skate and snow events. His enigmatic personality and flair for storytelling within those events soon eventually garnered the attention of ESPN who hired him to be the host of the X Games where he cemented himself as the face of action sports’ most pivotal era - an era that saw Travis Pastrana defy death double backflip on a dirt bike and Tony Hawk’s monumental landing of skateboarding’s first ever 900 and other iconic moments that led to action sports breaking into the real of mainstream popular culture.
“I remember seeing camera shots of him and he was just wide-eyed,” says Selema during an interview on The Nine Club podcast. “I'm commentating the contest with with Tony [Hawk] and Chris Miller, event’s over, and I’m hanging out with my dad afterwards. He comes up to me and he's just so fucking excited.
He's like: ‘Man, why didn't you fucking tell me? […] Why didn't you tell me, man, that these guys are musicians? This is jazz, man. It's like skateboarding is jazz.’ And he begins to explain to me: ‘You know, one guy is standing on the vert ramp and then he drops in and he does a trick and you see all the other guys are watching him and they're in a rhythm with him. Then the next person, he jumps in and now he's doing these extensions like a freestyle - like a he’s playing solos, but in the same song. It's jazz. Skateboarding is fucking jazz. They're all connected like the same way that we're connected on stage.’ I hugged him so hard and then he just says to me: ‘And you're the voice of this […] It's like, you're the conductor. It's amazing. I'm so proud of you.’”
Knowing that his father not only finally understood his profession but that he also respected and admired it was an incredibly significant moment for Selema, you can hear it when he tells that story.
However, the name that Selema made for himself throughout his career was not one that was necessarily of his choosing. During his high school years in the predominantly White area of Carlsbad, California, his classmates appointed him with the nickname “Sal” as most of them found the name “Selema” too foreign to learn how to pronounce. Despite his discomfort with this Whitewashed moniker, he reluctantly accepted it as an indication that he had been welcomed into his local action sports scene - a scene that was unfamiliar with accommodating Black people or other POCs within it.
By the time he was 19, Selema had committed his life to surfing. His devotion had deepened to the point of turning down the prospect of attending college and instead opting to take on a series of odd jobs that would allow him to support his endless shred habit. The year was 1991 and the Apartheid regime in South Africa had very recently come to an end. Nelson Mandela was freed from imprisonment and Hugh Masekela was finally able to return home after 30 years of living in exile. During this time when he was tethered to nothing but the waves of the Carlsbad coastline, Selema travelled to South Africa for the first time in his life to assist with managing his father’s homecoming tour and to connect with a vital part of his heritage. There, he got to meet his sister and his grandfather who he was named after; he had an audience with Nelson Mandela; and he got to look forward to paddling towards the backline of Durban’s North Beach made famous by the Gunston 500 competition that he had read about in surf magazines.
Although the country’s segregation laws had been recently revoked at the time, the mindset of the Apartheid regime still festered throughout the country. Selema could feel the tension that his presence provoked when entering spaces that were once forbidden for people that looked like him. When he was finally able to make his way to North Beach in Durban, he was met with astonished and uncomfortable stares of people struggling to fathom the sight of a Black man holding a surfboard. Once he had launched off of the pier that led towards his sanctum of salt water and caught his first African wave, Selema earned the praise and acceptance of the local surfers that he then found himself amongst. Over the next few days, Selema would continue to escape into the arms of the Indian Ocean that would carry him on its shoulders and welcome him like a long lost relative in a way that the land was still not yet allowed to. Of course, the consistent presence of a Black man on a formerly “Whites Only” beach soon caught the attention of the local police force who would attempt arrest Selema under the petty and antiquated law of not being allowed to jump off the Durban pier. Facing a hostile police officer readying to swing down the sjambok in his hand, Selema shielded himself with his surfboard while exclaiming that he was an American citizen. After providing the officer with the passport that he fortunately had in his bag, Selema was forced to leave the beach and he did so carrying the hurt felt in the pit of his father’s songs about the struggle.
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