The story of surfing in South Africa runs directly through Muizenberg Beach. It was here, in the early 1960s, that the first South Africans began to ride boards, taking cues from California and Hawaii but adapting them to a wave and a community that was entirely local. The Corner, as it came to be known, is a gently curving right-hander that has been producing world-class surfers ever since.
What Muizenberg produced was not just a competitive surf scene, though competition exists here too, but something broader and more durable: a culture of daily surfing, of the ocean as a practice rather than a sport, of the kind of community that forms when people share the same water every morning for enough years that they stop being strangers.
Muizenberg produced not just surfers but a way of being near the ocean, daily, unpretentious, committed to the water for its own sake.
The names that came from here
Grant "Twiggy" Baker
Big Wave World Champion · Cape Town
The most decorated big wave surfer in history and a proud Cape Town local. Twiggy Baker grew up surfing the waters of False Bay before taking on the world's heaviest waves at Jaws, Nazaré and Mavericks. He won the WSL Big Wave World Championship in 2014, 2016 and 2019, three titles that cemented his place among the greatest surfers of any era. He still lives in Cape Town and still surfs these waters.
Jonathan Paarman
South African Champion · Muizenberg-born
Born in Muizenberg and raised on the waves of False Bay, Jonathan Paarman became one of South Africa's most celebrated competitive surfers of the 1970s and 1980s. He learned to surf at the Corner, the same break that beginners ride today, and went on to represent South Africa internationally, winning multiple national titles. Paarman is part of the reason Muizenberg carries the weight it does in South African surf history.
Shaun Tomson
1977 World Surfing Champion · South Africa
South Africa's greatest surfing export and one of the sport's defining figures. Shaun Tomson won the World Surfing Championship in 1977, the first South African to do so, and redefined tube riding at a time when no one thought it was possible. Though he came from Durban, Tomson's influence shaped the culture of surfing across the entire South African coastline, including False Bay. He is the reason surfing in this country carries its reputation.
Riyaad Minty
South African Champion · Cape Town
A Cape Town local who became one of South Africa's strongest competitive surfers. Riyaad Minty surfed the False Bay coast from an early age and went on to win the South African Surfing Championships, representing a generation of Cape Town surfers who proved that world-class surfing didn't only come from the east coast. His story is part of the broader transformation of Muizenberg from a beginners' beach into a place that produces genuine talent.
The Corner
Surfer's Corner sits at the eastern end of Muizenberg Beach, where the beachfront road bends around and the parking lot fills up early on a south-swell morning. The break is reliably present, the south-east swell that moves through False Bay provides consistent waves most of the year, and the sand bottom makes it forgiving. It's the wave that started all of this. It still is.
The surfing at Muizenberg has always been democratic. Long before that became a value worth articulating, the Corner was accessible, in terms of skill level, in terms of cost, in terms of who showed up. Foam boards were rented cheaply to anyone who wanted one. Grandmothers surfed alongside teenagers. The competition for waves existed but the competition for belonging didn't.
The culture off the water
The surf community at Muizenberg has its social infrastructure: the coffee spots near the beachfront where you debrief the session, the board shapers working out of small workshops in the suburb, the surf shops on Main Road stocked with wax and leashes and the kind of boardshort that looks like it's been through a few seasons.
It is not a glamorous scene. That is its strength. People come here to surf, not to be seen surfing. The ocean provides enough of a view on its own, and it doesn't particularly care who's watching.
