Often rowing is associated with the historic, annual race between Oxford and Cambridge universities - not with a girl from Soweto, taking up the sport relatively late, and in the process breaking down barriers.

This is the story of Gugulakhe Mthembu, 23, a third-year BA Clinical Psychology student who started rowing in March last year after her ambition of playing football was scuppered by a series of injuries. Mthembu was one of the participants who took part in the record-breaking ErgoThon last month, hosted at the V&A Waterfront where the University of the Western Cape’s Rowing Club rowed non-stop for 48 hours to raise vital funds for the club to participate in several races.

She said that although the ErgoThon disrupted her sleeping schedule, it was worth it because the support the team got was amazing, and that’s what they wanted.

“Coming here, in my first year, I was thinking ‘What am I going to do?’. I needed to figure out something, I needed to find something,” said Mthembu.

She wanted something that would take out the aggression in her - the beast and the energy of pushing till the finish line - not knowing that rowing was exactly what she needed.

“Then I started gyming. That’s when I met Curtley van Wyk, the UWC Rowing Club’s men’s captain at the UWC gym, at the time, and he was an inspiration. He helped me a lot with my fitness journey. I told him I used to play soccer and he encouraged me to get involved (in sports).

“I was on my Instagram and saw Curtley and discovered that he was rowing, and I wondered: ‘What’s that?’.” 

Water sports was never something she imagined doing while running around as a young girl on the streets of Soweto, chasing opponents to wrestle control of a soccer ball.

“Because of the contact (number) I saw on the UWC Rowing page, I was very interested and thought, ‘Actually, let me try it; let me see where I will end up,” said a beaming Mthembu.

Today she is the captain of the UWC Rowing Club’s women’s team, competing at university regattas. Most races are held at Zeekoevlei.

Having fallen in love with rowing, Mthembu explains that she wants to spread the love of the sport and has already made contacts with the rowing community in Johannesburg, and will join one of the clubs there when she completes her journey at UWC. 

“Rowing saved me,” she said. 

The UWC Rowing Club has between 55 and 60 members. It was established in 2016, but there was a lull during the COVID-19 pandemic, and things only picked up again in 2022. 

“We have a lot of local connections. We compete under the auspices of the Western Cape Rowing Association, University of Sports South Africa Rowing, and we also have international connections with people from America who help us a lot in our fundraising. We’ve also had people from our club competing internationally,” said the club’s president, Luxolo Mlonyeni, from Tlokoeng(Mount Fletcher) in the Eastern Cape. 

Mlonyeni said that for the recently held USSA regatta, the club took five crews to compete against other universities. Because the boats are transported by road, she explains this contributes to the cost incurred by clubs, which is the primary reason for their fundraising efforts. 

“Rowing is a very expensive sport. Equipment is expensive; just participating is very expensive. A boat for eight people costs about R1 million,” said Mlonyeni. 

A defining moment this season was the USSAR (University) Sprints, hosted for the first time by UWC at Misverstand dam. The event broke new ground, with 54% of participants being Persons of Colour and, even more significantly, 58% female. These are numbers we could only dream of a few years ago, and they are a direct result of the students of UWC, she says.

UWC Rowing has become a beacon of transformation and equity in a traditionally male-dominated, exclusive sporting code. In just three short years, the University has shifted from being viewed as a development crew to standing on the podium's top step, winning the overall 2024 Universities Boat Race on points.

That victory wasn’t just a sporting triumph; it was a symbol of systemic change. Today, in rowing - previously seen as the last bastion of exclusivity - things are changing “Rowing is growing”, and UWC is at the epicentre of that change.