Clyde.

This is the beach where you go surfing, and it's beautiful. What it's called?

Doniños.

On the way here you said to me that you surf pretty much every day. How long do you usually go surfing for?

I normally don't surf for less than an hour. Between an hour and two hours pretty much.

What time of the day do you usually surf?

It depends. In Europe there's such a big tide difference, four meters difference, you have to surf when the tide is good. So this beach is good for low tide. Now the tide is coming in, and slowly it will get too much water and then the waves will stop to break. You have to choose the wind, the waves, and the tides for the right time to surf, otherwise you can come at the wrong time and it will be terrible. And if you come at the right time,

it will be beautiful.

Does it also change within a season?

It changes a lot in the season. In summer there’s a lot less waves, because there's big high pressure systems in the Atlantic, so they don't create storms in the ocean to bring the waves. And then in the winter, there are maybe too many storms, too many waves, and that’s definitely too dangerous to surf, so you have to wait till the conditions are right. It's not like football and tennis, you just go and play when you want. It's something you have to be dedicated to.

Can you tell just from the wind?

I watch the weather forecast. It's easy to see. They show the satellite photos, and the storms in the Atlantic, and from that it's pretty easy.

I was in charge of professional surfing in Europe for more than 10 years where I had to make the decision where we would compete every single day, so it's something that I've studied for a long, long time.

What is the difference between the conditions in South Africa where you grew up, and here in Ferrol, Spain?

The main one is it's cold. It's the Atlantic, it's cold all year, so you have to wear a wetsuit all year. Where I grew up in South Africa, it's tropical. The water temperature never gets below 20 degrees, maybe goes up between 20 and 25, so what you do is surf in shorts. The only thing you have to worry about is to not get too sunburnt. Whereas here, after two hours you're cold and you have to come out of the water. And the tide. There's no tide in South Africa. The tidal differences are very small, meter and a half, so in South Africa you can surf the whole day, as long as the waves and the wind are good.

Don't you miss South African surfing conditions then? The warmer climate, being able to surf all day long?

Honestly? I miss the tropics, a lot, because I grew up there, but I've been here a long time now, so I've become used to it. And also, the unfortunate truth is I can't physically surf for longer than an hour and a half, two hours anymore. My body is just too sore.

Because of your broken back and broken neck?

Yeah, I shouldn't even surf. I surf because I like surfing, and if I didn't have surfing in my life, it'd be a big hole to fill, so while I can, I surf as much as I can. With the limitations of just being a little bit smart. I just surf for myself. Although, this year in September, the first time in probably 20 years, I surfed in a serious competition, in the over 35-age group of the Spanish National Championships. And even though everyone was 20 years younger than me, I still came to the semi finals, so I was pretty happy with it. I didn't really train, but It's been 30 years since I first came to compete in Europe, and they had a competition at the same beach that I surfed at those 30 years ago. I had such a fun time.

There are quite a few of them in your book, starting with you breaking your neck.

Yeah, it starts when I had the accident surfing in front of my house, at the world's best wave that we've surfed a million times. It's the one place I truly love in life, and I wanna retire and live there one day. My mother lives there, my family lives there. I'm South African, and I've been out of South Africa for a long time, but I'll always be a South African. I'll never be a Spanish no matter how long I live in Spain.

And so I'm surfing one day, and there's a lot of rocks at Jeffrey's Bay, that's what makes the waves so good. It's a long wave and if it breaks very close to the rocks and you’re riding next to the rocks... But it's something I’ve been doing since 1981 when I first went to Jeffrey's Bay and fell in love with the place. I was only 16, and my dream was to have a house there one day. And I did end up buying a house there years later.

So on that day, it was a beautiful summer day, I ran down to the beach and there's not one single person surfing. And I stopped at my neighbor's house and I said "come on, let's go surfing", and grabbed him. It’s just one of those things that you do without thinking about it, and it ended up saving my life at the time.

And as I was surfing, I fell on such a silly little wave that I'd never normally fall. But because it was a day that you'd never think there was any danger, you don't pay much attention to what you're doing. I went past my friend, I laughed at him, I looked back and fell and hit my head on the rocks. And as I hit the head on rock, my head went back and broke all eight vertebrae in the neck. I was immediately knocked down unconscious and cracked my skull, and basically floated around under the water for I don't know how long. And when I eventually came back, conscious, I didn't understand what was happening. What's going on? Why am I under the water? What's all this? I was obviously all groggy and not knowing what was going on. Until eventually, when you run out of oxygen, your body just says “wake up, get a grip!”, and your natural instincts take over. Even though I was under water and paralyzed. Meanwhile my friend had gone back to where we started the wave, which is a long way away, and he sat there waiting wondering where I was gone. And then he saw my surfboard floating on the water—no me. He paddled like a mad thing to get to me on time and at the last second pulled me out of the water and rushed me to the beach, and managed to get air into my lungs.

I imagine pumping water out from someone who has a broken neck, that’s extremely dangerous.

Well, it was either that or drown. And once I was awake, the first thing I did was swearing. I said, “Where the fuck were you? Why did you let me ride? You let me drown, you bastard!” And then I was like, whoa, I'm in a bad way. I was bloody everywhere, because I’ve broken-cracked my skull.

But I'd been injured in the military, I'd already broken my back in 1985. I'd already broken my spine in a much worse break than my neck. So I knew what was coming. When I broke my neck, I immediately knew the procedures that I had to do to save myself. So when I was on the beach, I was telling everyone what to do, even though I was paralyzed. I was like “Fuck, don't move me. Leave me on the beach. Get the paramedics. Make sure they have a backboard. Don't move me! Just leave me on the sand. Cover me with a blanket. Keep me warm. Just leave me.” And I laid on the sand for hours before the ambulance came.

I loved the story of how on the way to the hospital, the ambulance driver made a detour because he needed to pick up his kids from school and they drove with you in the back while you laid on the backboard. There’s a lot of WTF stories like that in the book.

Oh yeah. The book starts with breaking the neck and then it slowly goes back to that time when I broke my back. It was the very last part of the book that I wrote because I kept putting it off.

Why?

Because some of my friends died then.

When then?

It was in the military that it happened. And I was only 20 years old and, and I was young and I had my whole life ahead of me. So it was a very difficult time.

What happened?

A friend of mine died with me, right there. He had his head taken off and I saw it, I was right there. Right in front of me. It’s something that I never talked about, to anyone. It was almost maybe like a release to do it, maybe.

Was it?

Yeah, I think so. I needed to get it behind me, at last, and move on. But it took me a while to go back there. Because It's kind of silly to say this, but breaking my neck was easy compared to breaking my back. That was a really tough time... the pain, the trauma, the violence involved in it. And then the fact that I still had to go back and finish my military service. So it was a difficult time for a 20-year old person to deal with. Especially, at that exact time, I was starting to get good results in the competitions as a surfer. And I was thinking, I can do this. And then that just stopped. Everything stopped. It took me five years to turn professional. I was 25, which is just unheard of. No sportsman turns professional at 25 years old.

Is it also unusual in surfing?

If you're not professional now by the time you're seventeen, eighteen, you're done. In 1990, the oldest professional was like 30, people retired at 30. Now you can maybe get to your late 30s.

Kelly Slater is the world's best surfer ever. He's 45 and he's still competing, but that's just exceptional, that's not going to happen too many times.

Speaking of Kelly, I can’t resist asking about him.

Kelly’s just an exceptional person. He's most probably the best sportsman out of all sports of all time, without a doubt. Eleven world titles, that's just crazy. I first saw Kelly surf the very first year I came to Europe in 1990 in France, he would have been 15 because I was 25. He was just this young kid up and coming from America. But you just knew. First time I saw him, I said, I'm done here. This is just another level, I'll never be that good. And he's an extremely intelligent guy. He's healthy, he eats well, lives well. He’s groundbreaking in probably a lot of aspects in sport in general, and as much really won't be repeated ever, ever. He is what he is. Kelly Slater. Just, like, untouchable.

You say that having your neck broken was way easier than having your spine broken, but didn’t you really suffer from any long-term consequences from it? Drowning, smashed head, broken neck.

I did have a case of amnesia because of it all. I couldn't remember simple things, like where I live, or my identity number. You know what your name is, your children’s names, your wife's name is. But then there's a lot of stuff that you don't know. Short-term memory was gone. That was a big scare. I didn't tell anyone that I couldn't remember things, and I just dealt with it myself. Long-term memory was there, I could remember things from 30 years ago like it was yesterday. I did memory exercises every day while I was doing my recuperation, because I was in a very bad physical state as well.

Luckily, they managed to operate, they put two titanium plates in my neck. There was no actual nerve that was cut, it was just trauma damage where the bones kinked, they displaced and stopped the messages from going past. It’s like when you bend a pipe, the water won't go through. They managed to pull all the bones back in place and wire it up, and then slowly the feeling came back. I could start to move my feet and my fingers, my legs and my arms. It was a long process that took two, maybe three years until I felt kind of okay.

You mentioned in the book that the hospital bill that your insurance didn’t cover the care in South Africa, or in Spain. The bill must have been horrendous. How did you deal with that?

Well, I had my own business which I started in 1999. Very small, just from home, but it grew and grew until 2009, when I broke my neck. And unfortunately in South Africa where the accident happened, there is no free public health service and everything is private. So the hospital bill was extremely large. And also it was the beginning of the financial crash and the worldwide recession of 2008-2009, which went right through to 2012-2013 pretty much. So to pay hospital bills and to keep surviving, I was forced to sell my company, which in the light of how things turned out and the recession was most probably the best thing I could ever have done.

I also see that you're missing a knuckle on your right index finger, what happened there?

A shark bit it off. I've actually got that done on a video somewhere. I put my hand in the shark's mouth and it bites my finger off.

How did you get so close to a shark?

I caught it, and I grabbed it.

So it was a small shark?

Yeah, it was a small shark, about two meters, maybe between a meter and a half and two meters. So I showed my girlfriend the teeth, and I was silly enough to open its mouth and go look at the teeth and then put my hand in its mouth, and it went crack! Well, it's a good video.

Speaking of sharks, what's it like to encounter a shark in the water?

I've always kind of thought that the shark you see, it's not going to bite you, because you see it. The shark you don't see is the one that will bite you. So if it's going to attack you, you're not going to know what's going to come from underneath. Whether that's true or not I don't know, that's just a theory. But yeah, sharks in South Africa have always been an issue. I know a few people that have been bitten, like really bitten, missing big chunks of leg. But it's like asking someone who rides motorbikes. You know it's dangerous. There's a saying that's so good: "Danger is real, but fear is invented."

So tell me about what it was like growing up in apartheid.

I lived basically seventeen, eighteen years of absolute privilege, being a white South African in South Africa. in the years of apartheid. It's a system you're born into, and you're just a kid, you don't know the truth. Until you become an adult, then you can actually see for yourself. There was no media like now. We didn't even have a TV until the late ‘70s. So you listen to the radio, you'd read the newspaper, and obviously any regimental government controls those. You don't think anything's wrong until when you're 18 and then you realize—wow, I've lived like this because I'm armed and I'm fucking keeping the control. I'm keeping the system as it is.

That sounds strange. Did you not talk about politics or the regime at home, didn’t you have black friends?

Definitely not. I was the oldest son so I had a younger brother and sister at home, and we’ve only got TV when I was 17. And with my friends, we talked about kids’s stuff.

And I obviously didn’t have black friends, that’s how apartheid worked. Blacks stayed in black areas, whites stayed in white areas. You couldn’t mingle, you couldn’t mix. There was no contact with any black children whatsoever until the end of apartheid.

Even though I must say, my father, who was way before his time in a lot of things, was one of the first white people to illegally train black athletes. He would have them come and stay in our house, illegally, and he brought them into the white athletics club, and trained them. He ended up training some of, at the time, Africa's best marathon runners. One of his athletes actually held a world record for a while in the marathons, and won every single major marathon in South Africa. He did this all completely against the law, and it turned out that the Secret Service in South Africa at the time—and this is actually the best name ever, it was called BOSS: Bureau Of State Security—they infiltrated an agent into the athletics club to investigate who's this crazy white man training black people.

Did he get prosecuted for it?

No, he didn't, because luckily, times have changed quickly and apartheid came to an end fast. And when black athletes could actually start to run and compete professionally, they were prepared and won everything.

So you first realized that something was wrong when you were in the military?

Obviously. Well, You suspect that something's wrong. And it was different times, not like now where everything is instant access. And coming to Europe, I realized that the life I've lived up to this point of time has been very different to this. Very different to this.

Why did you choose Europe, and not, say, Hawaii?

Because South Africans couldn't compete in a lot of places in the world. There were economic and cultural sanctions against all South Africans because of apartheid. There were no Olympics, no World Cup soccer, no World Cup rugby. South Africa as a team was banned from any international competition completely. And as an individual—you as well. But in Europe, you could compete. So pretty much all the South Africans were here competing on a European professional tour. I came here in 1990 to compete as well. And then once I arrived here, one year led to the next and then the next, and every year I was getting better results. Every year I was making more money, and getting better at it.

Was it a shock to come to Europe from South Africa at that time?

It was a big shock. Imagine that until I was 25 years old, I'd never seen an adult magazine. In South Africa you couldn't do that, it was absolutely crazy. And then in France the girls will be topless on TV. It's like, what the hell is this?! Fuck this, this is crazy! This is the best place ever, I want to live here! That's the truth. It's just such a liberation after a very conservative upbringing in South Africa, and also coming from the military.

Hm, conservative. There's this story in the book about an Afrikaans girl that you ended up having sex with through window bars, because her parents were home. So not at all that innocent.

No, not innocent! Not innocent. I was naughty. Me and my friends came from a rough neighborhood, the naughtiest neighborhood in Durban. And we came from the naughtiest beach and we were the naughtiest guys at that beach, ever. I was not an angel, not by any means. But things that we would think were being really bad in South Africa, we'd come here and we'd realize that this is normal. There's nothing strange about it. So then I decided, well, I'll go better be naughty here too.

What was the biggest difference you saw?

It was just a freedom. Just the freedom. I saw someone talk back to a policeman and I was like, what?! Fuck, you just say yes, sir!, and walk away. That was something I'd never believed could be possible because the policeman would beat the shit out of you in South Africa. They would take the batons if you'd even say no. Are you drinking? No. Bang! Of course you've been drinking! Okay, I've been drinking. South Africa is very strict.

Is it still?

No. South Africa is a completely different country now. Unfortunately. It wouldn't be bad for it to be a little more strict than it is. It's just absolute anarchy right now. And today, today is a big day. 16th of October, 2020 is a big day for history in South Africa. Right now, as we're sitting here on this beach in Spain, there is a chance that things won't go well today in South Africa.

What do you mean?

Well, there's been a lot of white farmers being killed in South Africa in the last few years where they've been targeted by a radical faction of revolutionaries that are saying that all South Africa's evils are from apartheid regime and all whites are responsible for what happened in the past, so they must be killed. And they literally are killing them every day. There's people being murdered. Whites are being murdered in South Africa every single day. And today there's a court case where a young farmer was murdered last week. So a lot of the farmers have said enough is enough. There's no protection from the police. The police have actually been found to be involved in these murders. And so the farmers are marching to the court today, and the revolutionary red beret-wearing communists-backed groups that are instigating these murders are also marching to the court today. And on national TV last night, the guy who leads this said he wants civil war.

Who said it?

His name is Julius Malema, and his political party is the third most-voted political party in South Africa. And he is openly saying that all whites must die. We must kill them all. And a civil war would not be a bad thing. And that is today. That is happening today.

Inciting a civil war must be against law. Aren't there any consequences for him?

Well, if any other person said it, there would be, but not for him. He can do whatever he likes. The government's just sitting back and doing nothing.

Is he also a member of the government?

He's a member of parliament. He's just not part of the ruling party, he's not from the African National Congress. He is from the Economic Freedom Fund, which are basically communists.

And so it comes down to how the court rules today?

I'm not sure what's going to happen today. There's just a court case where the people that murdered this farmer have been arrested and they will be charged in court today. It's just very sad, very sad. It seemed for the eight years that Nelson Mandela was in charge that the country was going in the right way. That there would be some kind of forgiveness between all parties involved, and the past would be the past and everyone would move forward in the right direction for peace and prosperity for everyone in South Africa, all the people in South Africa.

And this is the thing—this is hard to understand, but it's not just South Africa's thing, it's an African thing—it's not just black and white, it's tribes. To try to make it into a European scenario: all the Europeans are whites, but they're not all the same. Only difference is, the tribes are now countries. The Germanic people are not the Anglo-Saxons. And the Scandinavians are not the Latins. So even though South Africa is one country, there are 11 national languages. And there are a lot of different people in the Nguni tribe that migrated South down from the Equator through Zimbabwe, Botswana to South Africa. They were nomadic pasture grazers that came down from the north and were slowly migrating south. And they're all different tribes. The main tribes in South Africa are the Zulus, which are on the northeast coast of South Africa, just below Mozambique, which is where Shaka Zulu formed the Zulu nation. But he only formed the Zulu nation in the 1800s. It's not a tribe that's been existing for thousands of years. Shaka Zulu is most probably the most famous African king in Southern Africa. He was basically a warrior king and conquered a lot of small tribes that became one huge, big warrior nation that exterminated all the other tribes in Southern Africa, except for the Xhosas who were more further south. Nelson Mandela is a Xhosa. But the original tribe for South Africa are the Khoisans. The Khoisans are bushmen. People with a little bow arrows, and a little loincloth. They’re a small African nation, but they are the original inhabitants of Southern Africa. And everyone else, including the Nguni people, and obviously the white people, are people that had migrated to the southern part of Africa over time.

So South Africa is built up of a lot of tribes, and between those there's a lot of hostility, so it's not as simple as black and white. It's obviously not as simple as black and white is the same as—how could Europe, the most civilized society in the Western world have two world wars within 50 years of each other? And that’s basically, to put it into an African perspective, tribal differences. Because there's no reason for those two wars to happen. It's greed, money, power, and differences between cultures, which, in an African perspective, we just put as a tribal difference. And throughout Africa, throughout time—even in recent time, we had the genocide in Rwanda with the Hutsies and the Tutsis. And you just go, what the hell? How can this happen? How can the world let this happen? And everyone just looks the other way. So I'm worried about South Africa today. Today's a big day for South Africa. Let's just hope that sanity will prevail.

What would that look like in your opinion?

What would sanity prevail look like, would be for people to peacefully protest. The farmers are protesting because they want the world to take attention to what is actually happening. Because no one cares if white people are killed. People only care if whites kill blacks, no one cares if blacks kill blacks or blacks kill whites. That's an unfortunate reality. And no one likes to talk about it. No one cares if blacks kill blacks in Africa. No one cared about the Hutsies and the Tutsis. The UN sent a few troops, but no one really worried. Rwanda had nothing that the West wanted—they have no gold, no oil, no diamonds, they have nothing.

So what would be the best scenario? That no one is tempted to be provoked into doing something that they will regret. That there's a peaceful protest. That the farmers protest the police act in the correct way. That law and order abides. That these people that have been accused of the murder of this white farmer, are granted a fair trial. And if they're guilty, they need the full force of the law to fall on their heads.

The people calling for revolution have to understand that apartheid finished in 1994. Twenty-six years of the same party in the government—African National Congress—with the highest percent majority in the parliament.

So to blame the apartheid after 26 years is just ridiculous. It didn't take 26 years for Japan or Germany or Italy to come back after the Second World War. It didn't take 26 years for the rest of Europe to start to get over that, which was infinitely harder and more brutal and devastating than we can ever even imagine for anyone to live through there. And for people to just get on and create in less than 50 years the European union… That's all I can hope for, for people to just get over it. Peace and security for your children, that's what everyone wants.

Why do you think South Africa still isn’t able to get to that stage?

Because war and violence is power and money. And there's a lot of external interests in controlling the minerals, the wealth, and the sea routes of Southern Africa. Every drop of oil that goes from the Middle East to Europe and America has to come from South Africa.

All the major sea transport from the East to the West has to come through South Africa. So there's a lot of external interest in controlling the riches of Africa. And it's in their best interest that it's not a stable region because you can get away with a lot more than they would if there's law, order, and control. So that's the only thing I can think of. Well, it's not the only thing I can think of, that is the fact.

Who do you mean by them?

China, Russia. They are the ones funding the revolution, of course. Always have been. Now it's China more than Russia. China's colonising Africa and people don't realize it. And if you can pay for the revolution, that means that the person who leads the country is in your pocket forever. Whether people like to believe it or no, or see it, that's a fact.

Is there a movement strong enough within the country to oppose these external forces?

Well, the actual government is supported by China. The second most-voted party, the official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, is supported morally—I’m not saying financially—but morally by the Western world. The African National Congress has always been supported by Russia, Libya, Syria, Iran, Iraq. Always.

How do you know?

Well for a whole year of my life after I broke my back, I was transferred to military intelligence. So I did a whole year working for military intelligence.

Let's put this in another perspective—the Soviet union collapsed in 1990. All the soviet puppet states under the Soviet Union became independent again—Ukraine, Lithuania, all those countries that were under Russia. The Berlin wall came down, Germany became united and the Russian imperialism stopped in 1990. At the very same time, the war in Southern Africa stopped. In the very same time Nelson Mandela came out of jail. And South Africa became a one hundred percent democracy where everyone can vote. All at the same time. Why? Because Russia was no longer trying to take control of Southern Africa and was no longer openly supporting the African National Congress.

In Southern Africa, throughout the whole of the cold war, which was for some of us very hot, we had the CIA, Mossad, all the Western intelligence agencies working for us. The South African military had all the best arms in the world—we had nuclear weapons in the ‘80s, before any of the other major countries. Where did that come from? America, obviously. So, it's unfortunate, but the only thing that can keep me slightly optimistic is the fact that maybe, just maybe, South Africa is such an important strategic place in the world.

It's not Rwanda. It's not Ethiopia. It's not Somalia that no one cares about because they don't have anything that the West and the powers that be want. They're just desert, jungles. But South Africa has coal, diamonds, uranium, plutonium, all the major minerals, and they control the whole of the Southern ocean. And that is important for the Western world.

For what reasons?

Because most ports in Africa are dysfunctional and don't work, they're just disasters.

The tip of Southern Africa is a major strategic port because the ports of Durban, Richard's Bay and Cape Town function. So all the ships have to stop and refuel, refurbish, repairs, get more food. So just that fact is important, because in Mozambique—not much. Anywhere near—it's all controlled by the pirates from Somalia, and the same thing up the west coast. Nigeria kind of works, but not really. Senegal, kind of works, but then you've gone so far, you might as well just go into Europe.

And then the military strategic position—there's not a big gap between Southern Africa and the Antarctic. It's not that big. So if China or Russia stopped any ship coming past it, Europe would end up starving to death.

You think so?

Well, not starving to death, but things would be tough. It won't be so tough now because Russian under Putin is a lot more friendly. And Russia has a lot of oil and gas they're already supplying most of Europe with, obviously. So that's not such a problem as it was in the ‘80s when the Western world relied on every drop of oil and gas that came past the Southern Ocean from the Middle East. America now is pretty much self-sufficient with oil, they have enough oil reserves in Alaska and Texas. But it's all the trade for Europe from the Middle East and the East. For America, the west coast is not so bad because they just get across the Pacific. It's a long way from the Middle East, but from Japan and all those countries it’s not so bad. But for Europe, if the trade routes of the south are cut or controlled and restricted, it's a big problem. I can only hope that people that know, not just all the rubbish that you see on TV now, but the actual people that know how important it is, will never let the situation in South Africa become a Rwanda. And that the UN and the European and American governments would step in and keep the peace.

Okay, but why do they still keep it at this level of chaos and violence?

Because it's never really got so bad until the last three years or so because the ruling party's become so corrupt. The country's now bankrupt, they're poorer than they've ever been. The murder rates are worse then they've ever been. The homeless are worse than they've ever been, the hunger is worse than it's ever been in South Africa. Hunger creates discontent, and discontent creates revolution. And then there’s also the fact that the people qualified to run the basic infrastructures of any country are leaving in millions, and are not going back. They're in Australia, they're in Europe, they're in America, they left. And whether we like it or not, they're the people that have the qualifications to keep the basic infrastructure working. In South Africa, there's not enough electricity. Electricity does not work. Every single day. For some, they don’t have electricity for a few hours. You just don't have it because there's been no investment or no future planning to keep the production of electricity and the infrastructure of the electric network up to date and to cope with increasing population. So basically they're still working on the exact same system from 30 years ago. There's been no improvements. And 30 years ago there were a lot less people in the country. So there's no electricity for up to five, six hours a day in some places. It's something called load shedding, where they're like—for this whole province, from five to ten, we're cutting off electricity so we can send it somewhere else because there's not enough. And everyone's just got used to it.

How come someone doesn't run on the platform of improving just these basic practical things?

Because unfortunately, the party that's ruling now is Nelson Mandela's party. And even today, 90 percent of the world thinks everything of Nelson Mandela. So his political party, even though he didn't form it—he was the one that made it famous—it has to be doing a good job. But he died a long time ago. It's been 20 years of no Nelson Mandela and the consecutive governments are becoming more and more corrupt and more and more useless.

But the same people still vote for them because it's the African national colors—they have to be doing a good job. And the opposition party has white people. Blacks and whites, like it should be. But the African National Congress has no white people. Not one, never.

And so do white people vote for ANC as well?

Not many. Obviously, everyone's free to vote for who they choose, but not many white people will vote for the African National Congress. But in a country of almost 60 million with only 4.5 million of white, that’s not gonna make a change. They'll never make a difference.

Why do you think we still can’t find our way around armed conflicts and killing one another?

Well, our evolution as a species has taken hundreds of millions of years. And in the last hundred years, technological evolution has just left our evolution as a species behind. And when we are in a time of stress, our primal instincts of going back to caveman actually makes us make a decision, not logical education. That’s ingrained in our DNA. And that's why there's still wars and tribal bullshit. We're still in the 1500s. Whereas our technology is where it is. Not religion, not money, but our evolution. It's taken hundreds of thousands of years to get through that, and all of a sudden our technology has just gone swoosh and just left us so behind.

I love what you say in your book: "Fear and pain create change."

I don't want to skip what you said about never being Spanish. What did you mean by it?

So the fact is, I've nearly lived more of my life in Spain than I have in South Africa. I've been living here full-time since 1996. That's a long time. My children are Spanish, they've never lived anywhere else. My girlfriend's Spanish. Obviously, all my friends are Spanish. I live here at least ten, eleven months a year. But I'm not Spanish. I'm not a Latin. I'm just not.

Do you mean because of the difference in temperament?

Yeah, for sure, culture. I'm just not a Spanish person. I'm South African, I grew up in South Africa, and that is the basis for my whole thought process. The way I think is the way I was educated. And even though I can relate to how the Latins think and how they do things and to their temperament, I'm always going to be—as they accuse me—too calm, too serious, never smile. Anglo-Saxon. Cold as ice.

So anyway, that's the reason I haven't even applied for European citizenship. I still am a South African citizen. I'm proud of my heritage. I don't think I need to make excuses or pretend I'm anything else.

What is that heritage?

I'll say this. I've traveled all around the world for a long time. After I stopped competing as a professional surfer, I worked on a world professional tour for 20 years and I traveled all around the world. And when September 11 happened and the twin trade towers came down, I was in America, and all the Americans were very obviously very traumatized by that.

And an American friend of mine that we traveled all around the world together just said to me: “Aren't you embarrassed to be a South African with all that bad stuff you did?” And I was shocked at it. Really?! And then I just thought: I was born into the apartheid system. I didn't make it. I never voted for it. When I turned 18, it was 1984, and in ten years, my generation, my generation, finished with apartheid, and there was a black president. So fuck you. And when you have power, and you decide as a society to give it up and give it to someone else, then come and talk to me about whether you're proud or not. That's what my generation did. We had all the privileges you could ever want, absolute control. And we decided, us, in a referendum, to give that up, because morally it was wrong. So don't talk to me about whether I am embarrassed. No, I'm proud to be South African. That's how I answered. And I don't even know if it was the right thing to do. Morally, obviously, it was the right thing. Five million people can't suppress 40 million and not let them vote and be free, that's just morally wrong.

But the fact is, there's no democracy in Africa. Not one single country is a democracy in Africa. They're all pseudodemocracies where there's only one party in power and you can only vote for one person. Even though there's elections, you can only vote for one person because the opposition are exterminated, killed, and done away with. So making a true democracy in South Africa—morally, it was correct. Logically, maybe South Africa is worse off—but for every person, not just the whites who gave things up. Because we had the best education money could buy, we had the best of everything you could get.

But it only seems to be best for you because you had this white privilege. Majority of people didn’t.

There's no denying that because that is true. I am a perfect example of white privilege, personified. You could frame me and put me on the wall. If ever there's a white privilege, I had it. But what have I done with my male white privilege? I tried to do the best I can for equality for everyone. But as I said earlier—it’s 16th of October, 2020 and maybe there's a civil war in South Africa today. That is worrying. So that is what I'm saying—morally it was correct. Maybe, just maybe, logically it was not correct.

But then again—and this is something I think about a lot—is any democratic system in the world today a true democratic system? Most probably it's not. Switzerland, maybe, is the only country in the world where democracy actually works. Where every single person has a true saying in what happens, and where anyone can become a leader of the canton and a leader of the parliament. There's no president. There's no one that's actually empowered, it’s the people in power.

And so I'm watching the American elections now. What a fucking joke. How can these people be in charge of the most powerful country in the world?! How can it be possible? Surely you can find two better people. Come on. Both sides, Democrats or Republicans.

It does seem to be an inevitable consequence of a two-party system.

Exactly. Spain is the same thing.

Is it?

Well, there's two main parties. Now there's three, maybe four, but it's the power rules. You can't become anything unless you're in one of those two main parties, and that's the goal. The party will tell you not what you think is right or wrong. The party will tell you what to do. So any country where the party is more important than the individual has a problem. If I vote for Joe Black, I want Joe Black to say what he thinks is right, not what his working party tells him to think is right. And that is a problem. It is a worldwide problem.

So just going back to the South African thing—in Africa, democracy does not work. It's never worked and it's not even working in the rest of the world either.

That's what I‘m also often wondering. Do you think there is a viable system that would work for Africa?

South Africa was groomed to be the perfect African country—rich, perfect infrastructure, everything ready to become the rainbow nation. That’s what Nelson Mandela actually did try his best to do. He really did try. And for a while it seemed like everything was going to be okay, but then the money, the power, the interests... Basically the moment when Mandela became such a strong figure, it was gone. It became like a pack of hyenas ripping carcass to pieces.

Was he an exception to the rule then?

It's a difficult personal thing to deal with—Mr. Nelson Mandela. It really is.

What do you mean?

What do I mean? The myth, the Nelson Mandela myth. It's a propaganda machine that's been going for a long time. For many years Nelson Mandela was portrayed to be this poor man that was in jail for so long. Innocent, he never did anything wrong. And that's what most probably 99 percent of people think—that he was in jail because he was black and never did anything wrong.

What is the truth then?

What is the truth? The truth is that the CIA informed the South African government that Nelson Mandela was traveling to the Pretoria train station with 300 kilograms of explosives to blow up the station and kill hundreds of innocent people. And he was arrested with all those explosives on him and he was sentenced to life in prison for terrorism. That's the truth.

I’ve never heard about him being caught with explosives. Was this intelligence correct?

They caught him with the explosives. He was caught.

I mean, could it be that this storyline was fabricated and the explosives were planted?

No, it's not fake, it's true. That's a fact. While he was in jail, he was the leader of the African National Congress Party. He refused many times to go free with the government amnesty, but all he had to do was to renounce violence as a means to political end. He refused. He personally ordered for more than a hundred bombings in malls, schools to be executed, while he was in jail. Hundreds of innocent people killed, blacks and whites.

And this was in the name of the fight against the apartheid?

Yes. In the name of the revolution—we must do what we need to do. My sister, my own sister went to a girls’ school, with 600 other girls. No men, no guys, just girls. And they wanted to kill all these girls in a bomb blast. And while the guy was placing the bomb, it exploded before them. I think, in the book I go into all of the four bomb blasts that I was personally involved in while I was in the military. So, do you forgive someone like that? I once wrote a piece on this subject when Nelson died, because it's an internal battle that I have.

Tell me more about it.

When he became president, he truly was a majestic president. He truly was. And truly showed how all the politicians should be. All politicians—Americans, Europeans—to be humble, to do the right thing, and just rise above your own bullshit. Rise above what people expect from you—be greater than that. And he did that. He gave South Africa every chance to be a success, he led the way. So I have learnt to respect the man. And in this article I've finished with something like: are a thousand deaths worth a million deaths? Because if South Africa went into civil war, which was very close with the elections—if he didn't stand up, there was a good chance that South Africa would have gone into civil war. And at that particular time, the South African Defence Force and the general civilian public were armed and trained and ready for civil war. They're not now, no one's armed and trained and ready for civil war, but we were. We were one of the most effective fighting armies on the planet in the ‘80s. We've beat the Russians and the Cubans. And he managed to stop that. So again, can you forgive someone a thousand deaths because he stopped a million deaths? Most probably. So that's how I see Nelson Mandela myself. He's not the angel that he's made up to be. But he's most probably one of the greatest leaders of all times. So it's a difficult personal argument for myself as a human being, because nowadays the media controls what people think, and most people haven't had enough education or investigated enough to actually get to the bottom of a lot of the whys and reasons for a lot of the unrest in the world. They just see the easy headlines and take for granted what they read as the truth.

It's hard to question it, when you read the same story everywhere.

Yeah. You can read the truth if you've found it. But first you have to look for it. But then… so many people will be so offended by what I'm saying. The fact that I'm not going to be politically correct will automatically label me as being a right wing conservative.

In the US, yes, probably. But do you think that Europeans would react the same?

Absolutely, yes. In the last 10 years, the liberal part of the political spectrum has just become so strong and ridiculous in some of their thought process. That automatically, if you're not like us, you must be bad. Just the fact that I'm a white male means that I'm bad to a lot of the left liberal thinking.

Do you feel the same also here in Spain?

Yeah, for sure. In Spain, they're still trying to get over the Civil War, which is funny. Europe's got over the Second World War long ago and Spain hasn't got over the Civil War, which was before the Second World War. They still put you in—you’re either a republican, or you're for the crown, you're either a realist, or you're a republican. One of the two, you can't be anywhere in the middle. You're either marching for feminist rights or you're male chauvinist pig, it can't be anything in the middle. It's just ridiculous. Everyone just get on with making life as simple and happy as possible. And it's very possible for a man to stay at home and look after the kids and do the cooking and do the washing, and for a woman to go to work. It's exactly the same as a wife looking after the kids and staying at home and the man going off to work. There's no difference. We live in 2020. But unfortunately, the system forces both parents to go to work nowadays because it's nearly impossible for one parent to stay at home, whether it's a man or a woman. And that is the fact. If a woman does the same work as a man, she must get the same salary. That's fucking not even an argument. It's just a fact. And any country that doesn't have it, well vote your fucking government out. Simple. Understand, you have the power. You are the people that vote. Change your laws! Where is it going to change? When you go vote. And I know—we changed one of the most oppressive systems in the world, by voting.

Yes, but—coming back to the democracy we have now—every four years doesn't really seem effective at all.

That's why the Swiss have the only country in the world that actually has true democracy, because they can change the law the moment they have 5 000 signatures. I'm not sure if it's 5 000, but it's about that. Do we think we should work 56 hours a day? Of course not. Change the law! Simple. So how many hours do we want to work a day? Thirty minutes a day? Yes? No? Don't be stupid, we have to work a bit more than 30 minutes. Okay, 6 hours then. Does the majority agree? Yes? Done. Today, it's changed, tomorrow it's the law.

Yes, but allowing everyone to have a say requires a well educated population.

Of course. Education is everything. I could never understand how any government, and especially European government, cuts back on education and scientific development. It's just the craziest thing I've ever heard in my life. “We haven't got enough money.” Are you mad? That is the only reason the Western world works, because they've invented all the stuff. You don't think China and Asia are not developing like crazy every single day? And the moment they have more technology than us, we are doomed. So we have to keep our technological advantage. And how do you do that? You invest, you create scientists, you create doctors, you create another Einstein, another Tesla, or another Elon Musk. Who's South African, by the way. That's what you need. They're the people that change the world, the geniuses we have to find. You have to keep looking for them. Because look what happened this year, 2020. Western society is on its knees. Why? The Chinese have the vaccine, if you don't think they haven't got the vaccine, you're crazy. Of course they have.

How can you know?

Not that I know for a fact, but I know for sure. They had the vaccine within two months, for sure. Is there a problem in China now? No. Why? Because they've vaccinated everyone and it's a completely closed country where they only let you know what they want you to know. How come? And If they were all dying like crazy, the West would know because they watch them with satellites all the time and they can pick that up just by the amount of cars travelling, the amount of people moving in and out of cities. You can work out if there's a problem. And that's how the Chinese got caught, not because they eventually said there was a problem, but because the American spy satellites saw there's a problem in Wuhan and they were forced to admit it. Because the satellites saw them building hospitals so that all of a sudden the amount of traffic coming in and out between the cities stopped. The technological advantages nowadays are huge. They can't keep secrets anymore in the world. It’s just physically impossible. So how can Europe or America for that state, or any developed Western country cut back on education? It's inconceivable to me.

What about African countries that have very poorly educated populations?

Well, I can't talk for Africa, because I don't know. I can talk for South Africa that I grew up in, that we had the best education money could buy, one hundred percent. Just a high school education was really better than any college education in the United States now.

The education was extremely good. Now I can only talk because I have my brothers' and sisters' children going to schools in South Africa, so I know the pass rate now is only 30 percent. You don't even need to know half, and you just go up to the next year. It's crazy. So, what is the education in Africa like? Terrible. Unless you go to private school, which costs a fortune. You have to be rich to have a good education in South Africa now.

Did this also change when the apartheid end?

Yes, the education standards immediately went down, but that's normal. That's normal because the amount of the schools is the same, but all of a sudden all the population went to the schools that before only the whites were going to. And the African schools were bad. But that is the fault of the government. They still haven't built the schools that they promised.

You say that South Africa had the best education, but that was only for white population, a small percentage of the whole country. The vast majority didn’t have access to it.

Well, I can only speak for myself, and as I said, if there's an example of male white privilege, it is me. I had the best education money could buy because I was a white, and a male. If you were a male and you were black, you would have to go to a black school which had maybe 90 percent less investment in the quality of your teaching than I had. The chances of you having a good education were almost none. You had no real chance of having a good education, you went to a vastly inferior school than I did.

So clearly, that's wrong. And when I could make a difference, I did. When apartheid ended, in theory, the government was going to build thousands of schools. The curriculum would be the same, and everyone would have the same education. The standards would not go down, they would remain up. But unfortunately, the standards went straight down because everyone was failing.

Why wasn't the system able to maintain the high level?

First of all, there really weren't enough teachers. There weren't enough schools, and the infrastructure wasn't good enough. But the government should have taken that into account and fixed it. It doesn't take long to bring in teachers and build the schools. The country that does not invest in education is doomed to fail. And it's not a question of resources. It's a question of the people in charge making sure those resources get to the education of the population. Unfortunately, ignorant governments want ignorant populations because they keep voting for them. An educated population will never vote for an uneducated politician. And I can say that for America right now, that is what is happening. The education level in the United States of America is not as good as it should be. I'm not saying the Americans are stupid. There are extremely intelligent Americans. There's just a lot of uneducated Americans. In Europe as well. Slowly but surely, I think the standards in Europe are also falling, becoming average. Whereas the standards in the East are getting better and better all the time. Look at Japan and those countries, their standards are just unbelievable. Even India, even though they have huge problems with poverty. I think their standards of maths and basic education are excellent. I'm just assuming from things that I've read and seen, but I think that in general, the Eastern countries all must probably surpass the education standards of the West nowadays. Whereas historically in the past that was never the case. At least since the Renaissance anyway. Obviously, centuries ago, China and Japan had an extremely advanced civilization, which was probably a lot more advanced than Europe through the centuries of the dark ages. But since the Renaissance and then the Industrial Revolution, Europe has definitely taken off the education and the technological highground, which has kept our Western society and structure in place up until now. But I can see little cracks in the walls of our society.

What do you base your observation on that the education in Europe is falling?

I think that, and I'm generalizing now, that life in Europe has become so easy. The problems that exist are not real problems. The problems that can be easily solved have become blown up by the media and the politicians to be the things that are so important. And they are not important at all, really. People have just become distracted by smoke and mirrors. And the politicians want a distracted population. They literally do not want a strong, educated voting public because they'd be gone. Ninety percent of the politicians in Europe would be gone.

You really think so?

Absolutely. Because in most countries the choices are limited—you're either conservative, or you liberal. There's no middle ground. And the people that try to go in the middle, they just get run over. Like the person who taught me history—he said to me: “In politics, if you stand in the middle of the road, you're just going to get run over. You're either on the left-hand side of the pavement, or you're on the right-hand side of the pavement. That's the only way you're gonna survive.” He taught me that when I was 15. And throughout my life, he was absolutely right. The middle parties most probably take the best of both sides—the best of what the liberals offer, the best of what the conservatives offer, and you find some kind of socialist capitalist mix.

They're most probably the best option for any country, but they never survive because the radicals on either side always vote. Always. And the general people don't care. If a general election has more than a 50 percent turnout, it's like a success. But those are the lunatics voting. Of those 50 percent, 25 percent are the radicals on one side, and the other 25 percent on the other side. And the other 50 percent that are actually the educated, good people, don't vote. So the people that—and this is just a generalization, my personal feeling—those people that could actually make the difference, those in the middle, they never survive in politics. Because they just get eaten up by the lunatics on both sides of the spectrum.

And because life in Europe is so easy, most people don't care. Life has become so comfortable that no one wants to rock the boat. Unfortunately, this whole corona virus scare should have caused a lot bigger social awakening than it has. Everyone's like "let's go back to normal". No, normal wasn't actually good before.

Speaking of change, how did your injuries affect you? Because you say in the book that you have never been the same after.

It's a mental thing. Well, obviously, there's some physical restrictions, but it's a mental change more than anything.

And what was the mental change?

I became extremely focused on going for what I wanted.

What was that?

I became very focused on becoming a good surfer, and not very focused on anything else, really—not being a good human or being a good person. When I was in the hospital,I was told that I'd never surf again, and maybe that drove me to just strive harder and train harder, and really try my best to become good at that one thing. And then my father was leaving me these inspirational psychological cassette tapes that he gave me while I was in the hospital to listen to, which was a guy who was the psychologist to motivate the Apollo astronauts. Which is extremely good. We're talking about the ‘80s, where there was no sports psychology and all that. Now if you're a good sportsman and you don't have some kind of psychological support, it's like, something's wrong. Whereas then, no one had that kind of belief, belief in yourself. Like I say in the book, if you don't buy the ticket, you'll never catch the bus. You have to believe you can. If you don't think you can, you can't. So that's what I meant by the change in my life. It was making me focused on just that one thing. And that one thing opened the door to another thing, and another thing. And even though as a surfer I was never talented enough to be in the top—first of all, I was too old to start, 25 is too old to start, and then I also still have a lot of pain in my back. And I know for a fact that I I didn't have that natural talent that makes you great. I had motivation, I had a desire, I had talent, but I never had that extra talent to make you truly good. But that just made me work hard at everything else,

You think so?

No, I know so. (he laughs)

When did you realize it?

Most probably I realized it too late. I had enough talent to make a lot of finals, winning all of my rounds until getting to the final. And basically the difference between winning and losing in a final is your mental attitude. I've always had that I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough. If I believed in myself more, I would have been better, for sure. Because I was just so happy to be doing what I was doing, I was so gratified and pleased with what I achieved that I didn't have that extra hunger that makes you win or lose sometimes. I'd kind of thought, well, I'd made the final, job done. Job not done. Job's done when you're standing on the podium with the trophy. Whereas the person that had won knew the job wasn't over. So that relaxation is the difference between winning and losing. I've won some smaller events, but never really won a big event, and that's maybe something I regret. But it's a question of—is winning everything? Is being happy, even though you lose, a defeat? That's another debate completely.

So I’ve basically come to the conclusion that the people that are the hungriest and don't relax in the moments of truth beat the person that's not as hungry. The perfect example of that is Rafael Nadal—he's maybe five or six points in a tennis match that are crucial, and out of those five or six he'll win four. And someone else that's maybe a top five tennis player will win two of those five or six. And that's a fraction of a difference that makes a difference between winning and losing at top level sport.

I haven't competed for maybe ten, twenty years before I realized that. But I never regretted it one little bit. I was perfectly happy with the way things turned out in the end and my ultimate results were way better than I could ever imagined. So I'm happy with that.

So tell me about the love story that made you stay in Ferrol where you originally came to for a competition.

The love story. Well, it was one of the hardest things I ever had to do because I was engaged to be married. The church was booked and the invitations were sent, and presents were arriving and I was going to get married to my childhood sweetheart that we'd been together for a long time. And after spending the last four years here in Europe, basically experiencing this different life, I just couldn't bring myself to go back to the life that everyone had planned for me in South Africa. It was one of those very hard choices. And I took the hard choice, which was to walk away. Which is what made a lot of people not like me very much, let's put it that way. My parents included. So that was hard. It was also very hard to leave my girlfriend at the time. And if I never did meet the woman that I ended up marrying and the mother of my children, I most probably would never have taken that choice. And I never right up until the last moment didn't know what I was going to do.

Did your Spanish girlfriend in Ferrol ever know you were coming back?

No, she didn't know because I didn't know. You also have to understand that being a South African, you couldn't just come and go into Europe as you want. You're an African immigrant and you needed visas and permissions and it was very difficult to travel as a South African then. Even now, South Africans can't just come to Europe, you have to have a Schengen visa, which is very difficult to get. So it's complicated to come to South Africa, or to come to Europe as a South African because you're just another African immigrant and you're going to come here and you're going to steal someone's job and you're not going to leave, which is most probably the truth.

Speaking of immigration, what do you think of how Europe has been handling the African immigration wave?

I honestly think that Europe should seriously protect their borders and control immigration. Because the immigration ultimately is not the problem. The solution to the immigration problem is, that the Western world and the rest of the world have to sooner or later show more interest in the reasons why these people are coming to Europe. And not try to cure the wound with a band-aid. They've actually got to fix the problem. Africa's a disaster, and giving money isn't the solution. Solving the immigration problem into Europe by keeping people out isn't the solution. The solution is in the question why are all these people from Africa and the Middle East coming into Europe? Because they're not safe in their own countries. So make their countries safe. Make the people in Africa want to stay in Africa because their countries are fine, they have opportunities there, their children can have a good education, and are not going to starve to death. Educate the population, don't arm these governments, and don't finance the civil wars. Those are the real solutions.

In your book, you mentioned you had a secret daughter in France. How did that come about?

Me and my wife, we travelled all around the world since we got married in ‘96—we lived a very jet setting lifestyle. We lived in Hawaii, Australia, France, Spain, South Africa, up until our twins were conceived.

And then one day in July 2002, while being pregnant with twins, my wife started to feel ill. She'd actually got a blood infection that wasn't picked up. So we came back to Spain. She was only three months pregnant, so it's no big drama. We came back and she decided that she's not gonna travel anymore. And when she was six and a bit months along, she fell very ill and got rushed to the hospital because of the blood infection that got into the womb, and the babies were going to die. They had to take the children out through a Cesarean section. They had to, otherwise she was going to die too, because she went into shock. I was in Portugal at a contest, five hours away, so I drove back immediately. The babies were very sick when they were born, and my wife was in intensive care for two weeks. The kids were in intensive care a long time. So that just changed our lives immediately.

I stopped working to be more at home. And as in any professional sport, if you're not doing it, you're not getting paid. So that put a big financial burden on us. The kids, the stress of having your child in intensive care for so long. At the time it was just so hard, it was the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with. All my problems before were something I could solve, I could fix. It was me that was wrong. But here it was something that I couldn't do anything about. I was helpless. And then also, having twin boys is hard. Jenny had a mother, her father wasn't there. So we only had one grandmother. So I became a mother for one kid and she became a mother for another kid and we just dealt with it one hundred percent ourselves. And it was so hard to deal with. My wife went into depression and it became very hard for her. I started working more and more. I just lost myself in work. She lost herself and just wanted to be alone. There was no kind of intimacy or love in the relationship anymore. When I was at home, she used to ask “Don't you have another contest?” I felt like I wasn't welcomed. So I just went back to work and worked harder. I found my own surf company, created this brand that made clothing and surfboards, and built up a big surf brand very quickly. And then I went back to the world tour. And we just grew apart. We just never managed to survive the trauma of the kids.

I imagine you then became less resistant to the temptation on the tour...

It was hard, especially for me, from all the shit I've done, having my own wife reject me... But I kind of dealt with it because I did really make a decision when I got married that I was gonna be a good husband, and be the best person I could. I really did.

This is also something I've never really talked about much. So I was working in France at a contest and when the contest finished, we went out to celebrate, and we ended up in a disco, which I never really go out, I don't party. But I ended up going, ended up getting really drunk, and ended up waking up in the morning where there's this woman next to me, and I'm going, who's this? It was the first time I was unfaithful to my wife.

It was tough. I was really angry at myself. I was so disappointed in myself and it bothered me. I just left the next day. I was like, fuck, what have I done?! What have I done?! You're so dumb! Never do that again! But when we went to the next contest, which was also in France, she just followed me there. And a little devil on the side of me came out and was like “You've done it once, what's the twice? You're guilty anyway. You're condemned, you're going to hell now. And she’s got that French accent.” So I kind of took a conscious decision. I said, okay, I've been unfaithful. So if I'm going to be unfaithful, I'll just be unfaithful with this woman. I've messed up. So If I'm going to mess up, I'm going to mess up as little as possible. Because I’m not going to the next contest, and… because at every single contest, if you really wanted, you ended up with some woman, for sure. We lived in a world of sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll pretty much. The amount of times I just closed the doors like no, no, no, no, no was a joke. And so I did. I literally was only ever with Laurence. So I pretty much ended up almost being married to two women for a while.

For how long was the relationship going?

Well she ended up having a child. So it wasn't like a one off thing. We had a relationship for a long time, and my wife never knew, no one knew. I had a daughter. She came to South Africa sometimes, when I was on business. My daughter was born in 2006, and my sons in 2002. So yeah, it lasted for years, and my wife only found out a year after our divorce.

It wasn't something that came up in the divorce or anything. No one knew, not my parents, not my brothers, not my sisters, no one. Until one day I rocked up in South Africa: "This is my daughter, by the way." That's how that happened.

Did going through both extremes in one relationship somehow change what you look for in a woman, what you want from a relationship?

Not really. I’ve been with my girlfriend now for nearly seven years, and she says to me: “You can't be alone. You always need a woman by your side.” And I say, I don't know. Maybe In the past. But now, I think I'll be fine. It won't be for choice, but it’s not a sexual thing. It's just the company. To be able to enjoy things together. That's more important to me than the sex, that's for sure. If I was twenty, it’d be the sex, but now it's not.

When did that change?

It changed after I broke my neck and got divorced. Because within six months of me breaking my neck my wife filed for divorce, and basically, I was left at the bus station with a backpack and three euros in my bank account. Everything we owned was mine, because she never worked, but she ended up with absolutely everything. I lost the kids, lost everything, which was very, very hard.

And when something like this happens, you have to adapt, otherwise you will die. So you adapt to the situation. I was alone for about a year after we got divorced. It was a very tough, difficult time. And then when I thought it was time to have another partner, I thought, if it was going to happen, it was going to happen. It wasn't something that really bothered me. Of course, sometimes you'd be sitting at home alone and you'd think, how can that guy have a girlfriend, I didn't even have a girlfriend, what's going on? Sometimes you just get a bit depressed. Like, eating a dinner home alone. Come on. I'm not going to light the candle for myself.

And then I had one really good girlfriend, but she lived in America and I've lived here. So that wasn't going anywhere. But I was with her for a year, she was an Olympic swimmer, swam for the United States. So she was traveling a lot, and we'd meet up around the world kind of thing. It was good, it was a good transition. But I was still traveling all the time. I really put a lot of effort into my job, which was working on the world surfing tour. I was the director of the professional surfer union. I think I was on the road 260 days a year. You can't have a relationship like that. And then in 2012, there was a change in the world surfing tour, we sold it to a new owner. And I said, I just want to stay in one place now, and I walked away at the end of 2012. It was an extremely well-paying job, so the next day I was like, fuck, what have I done? But I lost my boys, they were young, and I couldn’t live like that anymore. We lived like rockstars, we'd just get on a plane and go to Switzerland for the weekend, or go to London for the weekend. I had so many miles from flying around the world, I had platinum cards and fucking VIP everywhere. People in the customers knew us and had conversations with the kids.

Yeah, I couldn’t believe some of your stories in the book. It is a textbook surfer lifestyle cliché.

Yeah. If I tell these stories to my European friends, they don't believe me. They look at me like yeah, yeah, whatever, come one. Like your friend's father hijacked an airplane? Come on, are you kidding me? Well, actually, he did.

Or just even stories like when I left with five Brazilian girls and no one knew where I was for 10 days. I literally made the flight back running. Well, sometimes even I can’t believe I did these things.

But also drugs. I was shocked to hear about how widespread they are.

Yeah. Andy Irons' is probably the most known case of overdose in surfing’s history. He was most probably the most talented surfer I've ever seen in my life, like with my own eyes—the most naturally talented, rebellious surfer. He became addicted to the painkillers. And in a hotel room on his way back from a surfing contest in Puerto Rico in a hotel room in Dallas, he overdosed with opioid painkillers. The official coroner's report said that he had a heart failure, which is just a nice way of saying overdose. I was in a tube train in London, and in between going in and out of the tunnels, I got told that Andy just died, and that just was it for me. I just lost the motivation to continue, so in 2012, when I eventually left, it was kind of a relief.

Although now I must say that things are a lot more professional. The surfing tour is fine. I suppose that there's still drugs, like in any sport, whether you like it or not. It's just covered up, swooped under the carpet because you don't sell products to parents and children if you know that the stars are drug addicts, I suppose.

You have lived a very full life, of what seems like saying yes to almost everything. Do you regret anything?

People always say to me: "You’re so lucky, you had the best life”. And I say, tell me how many lucky people that you know have a disabled child, have broken their back twice, and were forced to go to the army. How many lucky people like that do you know? You make your luck in life.

And I can honestly say that I'm so happy with my life. I'm so content. I don't miss anything, I don't think I've missed out. It's like that eternal question: If you could go back, what would you change? Of course I've made stupid mistakes. I shouldn't have talked to another woman while I was married. Of course. But that child exists, and she's beautiful. And I love her. So, do I regret it? No. Was it right? No. Would I do it again? Most probably.