Team Namibia win 45 medals at 2023 SASAPD
Namibian athletes with disabilities won 45 medals at the just-ended 2023 Toyota South African Sports Association for the Physically Disabled (SASAPD) National Championships in Cape Town, South Africa.
The 2023 edition of the annual championships, which bring together athletes from nine South African provinces and other southern African countries was held from 17 to 22 March at the Green Point Stadium.
Team Namibia competed in five sports codes: swimming, powerlifting, hand-cycling, goalball and athletics.
Namibian powerlifters won the country’s first two medals on the opening day of the championships. Swimmers, hand-cyclists and track and field athletes then raked in 26 more medals on day two of the event.
Track and field athletes scooped 17 more medals to bring the total tally to 45 medals after four days of competition. In total, Namibia won 27 gold, 12 silver and six bronze.
On Monday and Tuesday, the track and field events saw T12 athlete Lahja Ipinge won gold in 200 metres (m) sprint and silver in the 400m of the U/20 category. Ipinge finished the 400m race in first position with a time of one minute, and two seconds.
Other athletes that walked away with gold medals in the 200m category are T46 sprinter Lize Meyer, T11 Ananias Shikongo, T13 Johannes Nambala, T37 Petrus Karuli, and T11 Lahja Ishitile.
T11 sprinter Alfredo Bernado, and T12 Christopher Marungu all won silver medals in their respective categories in the
200m sprint. In the 400m events, Namibia’s gold came from Shikongo, Ishitile, Nambala and Karuli while Marungu and Chris Kinda won silver.
In the long jump mixed categories of the T42 and T37 athletes, Namibia’s T42 athlete Martha Nengola won gold while T37 Natascha Kakololo took bronze.
T44 athlete Denzel Namene finished fourth in the 200m sprints while T46 Lize Meyer ran a
time of 01:06 seconds in the 400m race which did not qualify her for a medal based on the Raza point system. Her time was ranked fourth overall.
Team Namibia travelled with 40 athletes for the championships. Track and field athletes used this championship as part of their preparation for the upcoming International Paralympic Committee World Athletics Championships scheduled for Paris, France in July.
Katutura glamour football club African Stars have a long-standing history of unearthing raw gems since time immemorial, polishing and turning them into national superstars. One such beneficiary was Swakopmundborn lethal attacker Edison Muheua ‘Chippa Masinga’ Muheua.
Having started his remarkable football career with unfashionable Mondesa outfit Juventus FC, his arrival at ‘Okaserandu’, as African Stars is known, from Unam coincided with that of other talented teenagers recruited to rebuild an ageing squad.
Young Masinga teamed up with the likes of hard-tackling defender Andrew ‘Jaws of Life’ Tjahikika, Rudi Louw, Pat-Nevin Uanivi, Heinrich ‘Gazza’ Kazeurua, Ikuaterua Tjozongoro, Zizou Novengi and Dennis NguezaTjetjinda, and was the designated ‘Langana’ in the Reds’ firing line.
An explosive, agile and diminutive winger usually operating on the right flank, Masinga was renowned for his amazing pace, creativity and brilliant decision-making in crucial areas. Barring his fragile frame, many doubted whether he would make the grade in the physical environment and dog-eat-dog business in the domestic topflight football league, but the resolute Masinga would have none of that and proved his doubters wrong.
The fairly young skinny boy bravely knuckled down to some serious business, making his doubters sit and eat humble pie with breath-taking performances. Masinga almost singlehandedly led the
Reds’ front line with the confidence and arrogance of a seasoned campaigner.
Masinga’s name was always amongst the first on the team-playing list. He made his official debut for Stars against Eleven Arrows at the SKW stadium in the 2006/7 calendar year and never looked back ever since.
Such was his consistency and near faultless displays week in and week out for Stars, that he was amongst a group of talented players deservedly selected for the Brave Warriors Namibian Newspaper Cup Shadow team, alongside other promising youngsters with the majority of them going on to represent the country at senior level.
Back at club level, Masinga continued to torment robust defenders down the right wing with his trademark clever runs behind the defence, tricky dribbling, and jaw-dropping speed, ably complimented
by goal-scoring prowess second to none. An extremely calculated well-spoken young man of decent upbringing, and mild manners, young Masinga was a dedicated one-club man.
The flying winger spent an amazing total of eight uninterrupted seasons at his beloved Stars before completely quitting playing competitive football to venture into other avenues whilst still at the peak of his amazing football career, having won almost all available silverware there was to be won in the following sequence: a pair of national league titles, complemented by a trio of NFA Cup gold medals; certainly, no mean feat.
The pocket-size flying winger also tasted international football when he toured Angola in 2010 with Stars to compete in a three-team mini tournament in Dundo, a filthy-rich diamond mining town, holed up in the Angolan north-east province Lunda Norte.
The well-grounded boy from Mondesa will go down in the club’s history books as a club legend, having played and rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest talents to have ever worn the sacred red, white and blue strip of Okaserandu.
Masinga can surely take pride that he has played in an era that saw the resurrected Okaserandu attract all the best players on offer that included the unplayable midfield pair of Quinton ‘Magic’ Jacobs, and Rudi ‘Robinho’ Louw, amongst a galaxy of stars that drew large crowds to their popular night games at the packed to the rafters Sam Nujoma stadium.