Who are your heroes? Zimvo Tawuse is one of ours

Zimvo streaks ahead at the Groeneweide Park Run

A group of primary school students can hardly disguise their excitement when they spy Zimvo Tawuse in a crowd at the local Park Run, delighted to see their hero in the flesh. Who will be brave enough to approach him, just to say hello?

You would have to catch him first…he completes the 5km course in an easy 17:58 minutes, lapping the majority of the participants and coming in a whopping 4 minutes (well, 3 minutes and 41 seconds) before the next best runner - whose own time is already impressive. Zimvo is the current record holder for the Groeneweide Park Run.

Zimvo Tawuse has developed a star reputation in Gansbaai over the past year thanks to his talent on the cross country track. Last year, Zimvo dominated across the board, first qualifying for the Boland team, then placing 3rd in the Western Province Championships in George, which earned him a spot on the Western Cape Team for the SA Championships. Unfortunately, this year, Zimvo fell during the Overberg Cross Country Championships in August and sustained a knee injury, punctuating his final high school cross country season with a full stop.

Zimvo has attended Grootbos Foundation’s Sports Development programme since 2018 and has made it into the Boland squad every possible year (Covid years excluded). Despite all of Zimvo’s success, the Grootbos Foundation Sports Development programme isn’t actually intended to train up and spit out star athletes. The star athletes, like Zimvo, have been an unintended and happy consequence of the daily free coaching sessions provided by the programme. What Grootbos Foundation’s Sports development programme is intended to do is to give children and teenagers a safe place to spend their afternoons, with sports coaching and meals to incentivise the young people of Gansbaai to make responsible choices about where and how they spend their time.

Zimvo makes the podium at the Western Province Championships

The Rising Stars, like Zimvo, play an important role in this programme. Zimvo’s success on the cross country track is only half of it and his star status despite his injury this year proves it. Zimvo is a role model for the younger participants, as someone to look up to and a positive example to admire and model themselves after. Zimvo is an shining example of the character traits which should be admired in any person; dedication, resilience and kindness. It is those characteristics which Grootbos Foundation hopes to instill in the children who attend our programmes, although we are incredibly proud of the success in sport as well.

Zimvo isn’t the only sports star from our programme: 69 students have represented Grootbos Foundation as the community’s Sports Development Rising Stars since 2016. Rising Stars are the sportsmen and sportswomen who have represented Boland, Western Cape and South Africa, in local, National and International sports tournaments.

We hope that amongst those primary school students who were starstruck by their local hero at the local Park Run, there may be, not one but, two or three Zimvos, who won’t be the exception but the rule; the children who have role models and positive mentors will become role models and positive mentors, and it is not just the life of a single child that is changed but the lives of a whole community.