Duncan Mackay
When Josiah Thugwane lined up on Blackheath last Sunday for the London Marathon, he did so free from the worry that dogged his every footstep through the streets of Britain’s capital 12 months ago. Then the Olympic champion was racked with concern about the safety of his family in South Africa, fearing that gangsters in his hometown of Middleburg might attack his wife and four daughters.
Thugwane, who has since moved with his family to a safe area in Johannesburg, recalls: “People knew I was away, that they could come at any time, they could do whatever they liked. There was no security.”
The 27-year-old Zulu knew he had to act when he returned home from the Fukuoka Marathon last December, having set a South African record of 2:07:28, only to find a monkey’s head impaled on his front gate.
It was the final straw in a campaign of intimidation which had begun after his Olympic victory in Atlanta. He had twice been the victim of robbery attempts and was beaten up in a road-rage attack by envious people in the townships.
Thugwane and his family packed up their belongings and started house-hunting. Ironically, they decided on Johannesburg in spite of its reputation as one of the most violent cities in the world. He and his manager, Jacques Malan, looked at 97 properties before Thugwane bought a palatial mansion with en-suite bathrooms, a swimming pool and, most importantly for him, a 2m perimeter wall complete with razor wire and electronic gates. “It feels good to be safe,” he says.
When he left for the Atlanta Games he was working as a cleaner at the Koornfontein mine earning about R1E000 a month and living in a zinc shack with no electricity or running water. A virtual unknown even in his own country, he returned a hero with a key to unimagined riches after his surprise win.
It was only when he arrived back in South Africa that the significance of his achievement became clear to him. Nelson Mandela came to meet him at the airport, a plethora of public functions were arranged and, to most in the townships, he was now an icon.
His success has triggered a running boom among Zulus and Thugwane tries to help as many as he can. After finishing third in London last year, he spent some of his prize money on buying 50 pairs of running shoes to take home with him. He tours the townships dispensing them to people he thinks will benefit.
“I only help those who are prepared to help themselves,” he says. “If people say to me, ‘I cannot run because I have no shoes,’ I say, ‘When I first started running I never had shoes and look at what I have achieved.'”
Remarkably he explains all this in English, a language Thugwane could not speak a word of a year ago, needing someone to translate from his tribal tongue of Ndebele. “I said last year that when I came back I would be able to speak English and I kept my promise,” he says.
When he returned home after last year’s race, Thugwane did not run for three months and employed a teacher to work with him for six hours a day, teaching him not only English but also to read and write in his native Zulu. It was the first formal education he had ever had. “They can steal my gold medal but now they can never take away my education,” he says.
Having been abandoned by his mother when he was a baby, he supported himself as a child by looking after cattle and picking potatoes. He only started running as a teenager because he heard it was a good way to make money.
“I ran a half-marathon in my town and I won R50. From then on I was a runner.” He received 13E000 times that for running in London last Sunday.
Thugwane’s story seems made for a movie, which he hopes it soon will be. A screenplay has been written about his life and he is in negotiations with two film companies to sell the rights.
The perfect ending for it would be a world record. The target is Belayneh Dinsamo’s 10-year-old mark of 2:06:50. “I am more interested in victory than a world record – but if I was to win in a world record that would be nice,” Thugwane says.