On the Durban beachfront, where waves curl into shore and surfboards slice through turquoise water, a group of young surfers wait for the next swell. They are confident, laughing and full of energy, but for many of them, the journey to the ocean was not one of leisure but of survival. These are the faces of Surfers Not Street Children, a homegrown initiative that fuses surfing, mentorship and care to empower children living on the streets or exposed to at-risk environments in Durban and Mozambique.
Behind it is Tom Hewitt, a lifelong surfer and the organisation’s founder and CEO. “I started the organisation in 1998, though it was originally called the Durban Street Team,” Hewitt recalls. “It was a small group doing street outreach, talking to children living rough in Durban, listening to their stories and helping however we could.
I had no idea that two decades later this would evolve into one of the most recognised child empowerment surf movements in the world.” Hewitt’s journey began long before Durban’s waves became his second home. “I grew up in the UK and first encountered street children while volunteering in Mozambique during the civil war. It was shocking.
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I had never seen children living on the streets before. It moved me deeply.” After the war, he moved to South Africa and continued his involvement in social work. “At the time, South Africa was transitioning from apartheid to democracy.
The country was changing, but there were still so many children left behind, living on the streets, surviving day by day. They became the pioneers of black surfing in KwaZulu-Natal. People would stand on the piers in disbelief, watching these young Zulu boys surf.
They were heroes In 1998 he formed the Surfers Not Street Children to support those children through activities such as soccer, drama and mentorship. Surfing, his personal passion, was not initially part of the plan. “One day, I was surfing at the Durban piers when one of the children, Thulani, came to me and said, ‘Tom, I want a surfer.’ He had never surfed before, but he could swim.
So I gave him a board and pushed him into a wave; though he did not stand up, he rode it on his stomach, hooting with joy. That moment changed everything,” said Hewitt. In the late 1990s, surfing in South Africa was still largely a white-dominated sport.
“At that time, there were only a handful of black surfers in Durban. And many felt they had to act a certain way to fit in. It was not easy for them; there were racial tensions in the water, and not everyone welcomed change.” But the children from Hewitt’s programme were fearless.
They charged into the waves, breaking social and cultural barriers. They were heroes.”
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