For Jenkem, Nic Dobija-Nootens spoke to Salik Harris about the ebbs and flows of skateboarding in South Africa and what the scene is like today:
When I started, I remember there was no one in my area that actually skated. I always needed to find someone to skate with. Then some guys moved into my area that were from Germany, and they were a group of skateboarders that just came down to skate and film and live here. That was the first time I actually experienced other people from other parts of the world skating, and ever since then, you can’t walk down the road without seeing someone skateboard. It’s booming at the moment.
We try to get some boards from [our local shop] Baseline ’cause people buy a new setup, take whatever they don’t need, and give it to the kids, and just try and like uplift the community because they need skateboarding. They need something to do bro. And this area’s perfect for it, all the hills and stuff like that.
[…]
Skateboarding took me away from a lot of things that could have ended really horrible. It kind of was addictive, so it’s all I wanted to do. I could have found so many other things addictive, and I’m really glad I found skateboarding addictive.