The place to be this past weekend was Durban’s North Beach for the Durban Open Beach Volleyball tournament. This was the South African leg of the Change the Angle initiative. For the first time in the history of our country, a women’s only Beach Volleyball tournament was televised which bodes well for a sport that’s hardly seen.
Following the weekend’s activities Lonwabo Nkohla sat down with Natasha Webber, who alongside her partner Palesa Masinga secure top honours on the 16th of April 2023.
Of course the love affair between Volleyball and Natasha is decades long: “I’ve played Volleyball since I can remember, my mom used to play, my dad used to be my coach. So I kind of grew up next to the court. It’s about 30 years between me and Volleyball.”
Speaking about where we are as a country in terms of Volleyball, this is what Natasha had to say; “unfortunately for South Africa Volleyball is not a professional sport, we’ve been considered a Cinderella sport because we don’t have funding. Volleyball is not a televised sport. This past weekend was the first time a Volleyball tournament was aired live on SABC which is an incredible feat. We’ve got some lengths to go. We need people to come on board and back us.”
“We have to start building at grassroots development, we need to get Volleyball back in schools. That’s where we need to start to build Volleyball. To get the sponsors to see that it’s a sport that’s worse sponsoring. It’s a very dynamic sport.”
“It’s our first ladies only event that’s ever been held and to be honest back in the day up until today there’s still a lot of sexism in all sports, ladies unfortunately aren’t favoured. A lot of the prize money is still not equal for both genders”
Masinga and Webber secured R25 000 cash prize for victory in the 2-day tournament.
“When the ladies heard that the tournament will be sponsored by LUX, the ladies jumped at the opportunity to go play. They invited the top 16 teams in the country to participate. Accommodation was sponsored, there was also prize money and for the first time we could actually walk away with money in our pockets. Because we aren’t funded we have to pay for ourselves to enter tournaments, to travel, accommodation food. At the end of the day we do it for the love and not to gain something, but it’s always good to walk away with something. We were so happy for LUX to come on board.”
The tournament also sported a bright purple colours of the beauty brand LUX South Africa through the #ChangeTheAngle campaign, which aims to highlight sexism in sport and challenge media to change the focus of women sport coverage. A lot of media coverage of women athletes still focuses on female bodies rather than sporting achievements.
“When women are out there especially in Beach Volleyball, you think of Bikini’s, beach bodies, you think of that angle but they wanted to change the focus and show that we are athletes first before anything, we are not there to showcase our bodies but what we can achieve, we work just as hard as men and we don’t want to be in a position where the photographs are always highlighting our bodies or private parts. The campaign was amazing and they did it so well. We are super stoked that LUX came on board and we are hoping for a long term partnership.”
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