Chatting to Pro Golfer, Welsh lady Sahra Hassan

Cell C SA Women’s Open

Sahra Hassan

The upbeat Welsh golfer, Sahra Hassan from Newport was back in the country to tee-off for the Cell C SA Women’s Open.

“This is my third time taking part in the SA Women’s Open,” the cheerful individual stated. “I love it but San Lameer is going to be testing! This is my first time I am playing here and it looks like a good challenge.”

“I managed to hit a few balls at the range but got drenched in the downpour; my clubs and bag are off drying at the mo. I did a bit of putting earlier as well so I am feeling good ahead of the tournament tomorrow (Thursday).”

During the build-up to the London Olympics, Hassan was awarded the 2012 United Kingdom Sportswoman of the Year by the Muslim Women’s Sports Foundation at Wembley Stadium, “It was perhaps the proudest moment of my career. I didn’t even know that I had been nominated to be honest.”

“I was up against a pro soccer player and a basketball player. I really hadn’t expected to be recognised with the award. I hadn’t even prepared a speech!” she says with a grin.

The 26year old golfer will be playing with in-form South African Nicole Garcia and French player Ariane Provot. “I was in the South of France in Biarittz two weeks ago playing in the Lacoste Ladies Open de France. I almost got a hole-in-one! It was so close, it teasingly hit the pin and frustratingly bounced out!” an animated Hassan claims.

Continuing, the relaxed player states, “I don’t have any real favourite moments that stand out for me, I have a terrible memory but had I landed that hole-in-one in France, that moment would have stood out for me!”

“I love the game because it is relaxing and yet so frustrating, it’s difficult to describe. I was a fairly decent tennis player back in the day. I got to warm-up with Serena and Venus Williams; that was really cool! When I was 13years old my tennis coach recommended I take a month off which I did. My dad was a keen golfer, so I started playing with him and have never looked back. I still play a bit of tennis with my mates when I get the time.”

Chatting about any difficulties she has had to overcome, she gently responds, “The first time I was ever challenged, I was too young to really understand what was going on. I was playing girls almost double my age. When I was about ten, I was taking on 18year olds - and I was beating them. In one instance, my opponent did take the defeat to well and resorted to a few racial remarks.”

“I didn’t retaliate, didn’t know how but those words had an impact on me!”

Coming from a very supportive close family, the optimistic sports star encourages, “What advice would I give if I were standing up in front of group of people I would tell them....RUN!” she breaks into a beaming smile and continues,  “No, just kidding. The advice is simple. Take a deep breath and try and relax. And smile!”

“I think if you really wanted to overcome adversity, the first step would be making up your mind to make a change. Like in golf, you have to be mentally strong to overcome life’s challenges. I have the support of my extended family and close friends and I am extremely fortunate to have this. Together with their support and hard work, I am able to live out my dream. How lucky am I?”

Asked what is next for her, after the Cell C SA Women’s Open, she concludes, “I head home for three weeks to rejuvenate before three more big events to end off the year. I am off to play in China in mid-November, then head to New Delhi in India at the beginning of December with my last stop for the year in Dubai.

For more info visit www.sawomensopen.co.za or www.ladieseuropeantour.com

To follow Sahra Hassan, find her on twitter: @sahra_hassan13

All pix by Justin Klusener

Chatting to her after the event, Sahra said a moment that stood out for her was the opening function - a traditional braai or BBQ. "The braai was great fun, loved the traditional food!"
In regards to her score of +4 (72, 76 & 72) she said, "I am happy with where I finished, hit the ball great all week, just couldn't buy a putt! Very frustrating as I could of finished well up there if I'd holed a few, but just didn't happen for me."
And speaking about San Lameer, the wonderful welsh lady said, "The course was great, loved it, considering the bad weather we had it was still in great condition. I just found the greens tricky!"

The Heritage Hydra

My big sister's monthly column in The Mercury - a morning newspaper here in Durban! So proud of her.... 

Illa Thompson

Column 74

September 2014

It is national Heritage Day on Wednesday 24 - a day which Wiki (our universal oracle of all information) tells us that “South Africans across the spectrum are encouraged to celebrate their culture and the diversity of their beliefs and traditions, in the wider context of a nation that belongs to all its people.”

20 years into our democracy, this noble concept has become something of a multi-layered mine-field of political and philosophical complexity, because Heritage is not a one-size-fits all kind of notion: it is a Hydra of Greek mythological proportions.

By definition, Heritage is “the full range of our inherited traditions, monuments, objects, and culture.  It is the range of our contemporary activities, and the meanings, and behaviours that we draw from them”. But in South Africa, this gets complicated – because we have a disjointed, multifaceted sense of “our”.

  

An interesting example of this is Cape Town theatre-maker, Brett Bailey’s “Exhibit B” which opens this week at the Barbican Centre in London, after having caused a fuss at the Edinburgh Arts Festival last month.  Bailey is a phenomenal, prolific, fearless and evolved playwright, designer, director and installation-artist whose visually-articulate work often interrogates the dynamics of the post-colonial world and considers how history prescribes the present.  

His “Exhibit B” is informed by and is a parody of the grotesque “Human Zoos” of Victorian Europe. Billed by Le Soir in Brussels as “terrible and magnificent,” the installation is part performance and part museum exhibition comprising 13 tableaux designed as “curiosity cabinets” featuring black actors with colonial-era artefacts, and, more disturbingly, contemporary settings. The intention is for these living sculptures to shatter the viewer’s complacency and to offer a harrowing visual reminder of the appalling history of global colonialism, slavery and racial hatred.

Activists in London, ahead of the opening at the Barbarian, have been vehemently protesting and calling for the exhibition to be banned. A petition has been circulating which so far has 18 000 signatures.

UK activist, Sara Myers criticised the work “for the lack of respect it gave to the ancestral children of the enslaved and dehumanised.”

In response, Bailey is quoted in an on-line media interview: “In Exhibit B, I intended to make people aware of systems of racism, objectification and dehumanisation that have legitimised brutal policies of plunder, control, exclusion and extermination; systems that are still in place today. I’m sorry that because of sensationalistic media reports and social media hysteria, many have been alienated from the work without having seen it,”

In a media statement, he explains: “I stand for a global society that is rich in a plurality of voices. I stand against any action that calls for the censoring of creative work or the silencing of divergent views, except those where hatred is the intention”.

“The intention of Exhibit B is never hatred, never fear, never prejudice. It is love, respect and outrage.”

“Do any of us really want to live in a society in which expression is suppressed, banned, silenced, denied a platform? If my work is shut down today, whose will be closed down tomorrow?”

Having so recently experienced a similar situation around the furore of displaying Brett Murray’s The Spear at the Goodman Gallery, we watch with interest as Exhibit B is scheduled to open at the Barbican tomorrow (23 September) – appropriately a day ahead of Heritage Day in South Africa.

As a counterpoint to the animated international debate around Exhibit B, my focus shifts to one of the many heritage events on our local September calendar - the annual Umkhosi woMhlanga, or Reed Dance. This is a fascinating study of tradition meeting tourism; of history being revived and affirmed in contemporary culture; of politics meeting custom.

An age-old ritual was dormant for generations and revitalised by King Goodwill Zwelithini in 1984. This year in excess of 30 000 Zulu maidens celebrated 30 years of the ceremony’s revived existence by processing to the royal palace, bare-breasted, carrying symbolic long reeds. I suspect nothing quite like this exists event anywhere else in the world.

In the small print of the extensive media coverage which the Reed Dance received last week, was the announcement that R300 million would be invested to build a village in eNyokeni to offer “safe accommodation for the girls overnight.”

The national department of Arts and Culture who are funding this project announced in May: "We are looking at these cultural pressings not only for a reed dance but also to invest into the local economy, because people will be attracted towards eNyokeni," says Department spokesperson Mogomotsi Magodini. He adds "There will be better infrastructure; there will be better tourism attraction and so forth."

This is when one’s response to Heritage gets complicated: R300 million of Arts and Culture funding to be invested into a cultural village to support the Reed Dance in eNyokeni; and R300 million of city money on the Umkhumbane Freedom Park cultural centre and tomb for Queen Thomozile Jezangani KaNdwandwe Zulu,  the mother of King Goodwill Zwelithini, in Cato Manor. That’s R600 million of civic funds being invested into two heritage sites. 

For us to meaningfully journey towards an authentic national heritage which truly celebrates “our” inherited traditions; more of our shared legacies and customs should find their way into the consciousness, plans and budgets of the City and Department of Arts and Culture.

Celebrate Durban – traditionally the city’s far reaching annual September heritage season allowing 60 or so of the city’s emerging and micro-eventors to create their own community heritage-themed events and projects, didn’t happen again this year. No formal reason was given: lack of funding perhaps, or possibly insufficient administrative infrastructure.  I for one really miss this joyous, far-reaching, inclusive festival, and find that those heritage events which did take place this year as stand-alone projects, lacked identity and cohesion.

To many, Wednesday’s public holiday is a day to invite friends and neighbours for a braai.

A day full of stormy complexities about legacy, birthright, tradition and custom, has become relegated to a day of lighting a fire and cooking meat.

How incongruous. How funny. How tragic.