With Namibia set to celebrate her 32 years of independence and democracy on Monday, it is imperative to reflect on the many achievements and challenges the local sports fraternity has faced over the past three decades.
Podium positions
The country made its mark on the international sporting arena in 1992, when the legendary Frank Fredericks was the first to set the tone with his historic two silver medals in the men’s 100m and 200m races at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, and then following that up with two more silver medals at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, US.
Namibia remained on course on the international sporting circuit, and was represented at the following five editions of the Olympics: 2000 in Sydney, 2004 in Athens, 2008 in Beijing, 2012 in London and 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. Paralympian Reginal Benade won Namibia’s first Paralympic medal when he scooped bronze for discus in Beijing, 2008, while in 2012, young Johanna Benson won Namibia’s first Paralympic gold medal in London in 200m and silver in 100m in her T37 classification.
A few years later, Ruben //Gowaseb made history by becoming the first Namibian to win two successive gold medals at the Special Olympic Games in 2015 and 2019 in the men’s half marathon.
It was only at last year’s Tokyo Olympics that Namibia once again managed to hog international headlines when teen sprint sensation Christine Mboma rewrote the history books by becoming the first woman ever to win a medal at the Olympics for Namibia. Mboma, making her debut at the global multi-sport showpiece, clocked a remarkable personal best time of 21.81seconds to scoop silver in the women’s 200m final – in the process bringing an end to Namibia’s 25-year medal drought at the games.
Not only on the athletics front, but Namibia has over the past 32 years also excelled in boxing, and have to date produced four renowned world champions in Harry Simon, Paulus Moses, Paulus Ambunda and Julius Indongo, and a horde of continental and international champions in various weight categories.
Despite the sporadic crippling politics and infighting among administrators, local football has equally enjoyed its fair share of success regionally and continentally, winning the 2015 Cosafa Cup, the 2016 Cosafa Plate.
Unequal funding
The country’s sports success stories are too many to sum up in one go, but those many accomplishments have still not fully culminated in the complete integration and self-sustainability of the local sporting sector after 32 years of self-governance and uninterrupted peace.
The Namibian sports fraternity remains partially unequal in terms of funding and the overall quality of development programmes and human capital. In other spheres of the world, sports are big industries that employ millions of young and old, and in some cases, sports in countries like America and the UK contribute to those country’s GDPs far much higher than some well-known traditional industries such as agriculture and others.
But that has not been the case for Namibia over the past 32 years, as our local sports industry’s overall contribution to the country’s GDP is currently less than 2%, although efforts remain afoot to try and grow that figure to at least over 2% by 2025.
Dependency
Renowned local sports expert Isack Hamata said the biggest problem with sports across the globe, especially here in Namibia, is the disparaging beggar or dependency approach towards seeking funding. “It will therefore take us 100 years for sports to become self-sustainable; maybe even longer in Namibia. Sports largely depend on sponsorships by corporates and wealthy individuals,” he noted.
Hamata added that some four years ago, MTC pulled out as sponsor of the elite football league, and the result was that there was no functioning senior football being played for 18 months. “Other sports federations can’t even have their AGMs, let alone host games, because they don’t have someone to fund them. Some clubs have had to fold because they could not carry operational costs on their own without sponsorships,” he said.
“The moment benefactors step aside or disinvest from sport, that particular sports code or club starts to suffer. The reality in Namibia is that our sports governance model does not lend itself to sustainability. For starters, the sports sector is not run on a business model. Even the administrators of federations or clubs across the board are not professionals; they do this out of love for the sport or because their children are in those clubs or because they were once great athletes. As long as that is the case, we will never be self-sustainable. They will always rely on someone’s goodwill to survive.”
Self-sustainable
He adds that for local sports to become self-sustainable, a paradigm shift in all spheres is urgently needed, and a radical change of attitude and thinking is also needed. “The first thing we need to do is change how we govern or run our sports. We must become professional by having full-time administrators running sports federations and teams. That in itself is an impossibility because there will be no money to pay these people. Why would people leave their full-time occupations to go and spend energy on something that does not have an income?
The second thing is that we need to package our sports events differently. Sports marketing is key. At the moment, sport is just sport for sports sake. Having our own sports events on television could attract sponsorships, endorsements and advertisements from corporates. That could earn federations and clubs some money with which they can run the codes and the clubs. But that will not make sports in Namibia self-sustainable. It will just help it to get by on a hand-to-mouth basis.”
Sports fund
“Lastly, this is an unexplored territory but it could help to get sports out of the dependency cycle. There needs to be a deliberate and conscious approach by government and corporate Namibia to mobilise massive amounts of money towards a sports fund.
That fund should be able to conduct profitable business, and the profits would be ploughed back into developing infrastructure and funding sports activities across the board.
It is not as easy as it sounds and may take a long while to reach fruition, but it is an effort that should be considered and pursued upon refinement of the idea. If it is successful, sports can generate its own money to fund itself and will even have the right to dictate which sponsors it can work with,” concluded Hamata.