Namibian heroes return home

NAMIBIA’s Commonwealth Games team, headed by their gold medallists Jonas Jonas and Helalia Johannes made a triumphant return to Namibia on Wednesday.

A high level government delegation led by Minister of Sport, Erastus Uutoni; his deputy minister Agnes Tjongarero; the president of the Namibia Olympic Committee, Abner Xoagub; and the chairman and chief administrator of the Namibia Sport Commission, Joel Matthews and Freddy Mwiya, was on hand to welcome the athletes back at the Hosea Kutako International Airport, while members of the Namibia Defence Force and a cultural dancing group were also out in full force.

Minister Uutoni thanked the athletes for putting Namibia on the map, saying that they had inspired many.

“You were not alone in Australia, many people were watching and following you on TV, and now you can see with this turn-out how you have inspired the nation. This achievement is for this beautiful country Namibia and you have made us so happy,” he said.

Uutoni also thanked the coaches and the athletes’ support staff and said his government was committed to developing sport.

“The government committed N$4 million towards the success of our athletes in Australia. Now I call on our business community to come on board and assist my ministry with the development of sport, because this is a multi-sectoral responsibility and the government can’t do it alone,” he said.

Uutoni said his government was working hard to try and improve sport facilities throughout the country.

“Some of our facilities are in a very poor state, but we are doing our best to address these issues. We are rolling out a programme called the Namibia Excellence School Academy to develop and identify talent in the regions, but our facilities are not that good and our people cannot be trained properly. We really need to step up and mobilise amongst ourselves to ensure that every region is identified, because I found that some of the sport codes are hardly found in the regions, but we have a lot of talent there,” he said.

“Let’s mobilise and organise ourselves, let’s strategise and unite – if we can do that, we will win more medals for this country,” he added.

Johannes thanked everyone who had come out to welcome them, as well as her colleagues from the NDF.

“I just want to thank God who guided us through our event. I did not achieve this by my own effort, but by the grace of God and I thank God that I didn’t give up. I also want to thank my training partners and all the Namibians who supported us,” she said.

Jonas, who narrowly missed out on the gold medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, said he had been preparing to win the gold medal since then.

“I already started preparing for this in 2014 when I felt I was totally robbed (of the gold medal). God gave me the strength and Namibia is on the move, we are rising,” he said.

Xoagub said that Namibia has now competed at seven Commonwealth Games since 1994 during which time it has won a total of 20 medals (five gold, four silver and 11 bronze).

“The investment in our athletes has paid off, but we need to mobilise our resources to transform Namibia into a sporting nation. It means that we need more money if we want to win more gold medals,” he said.

Xoagub said that, as Commonwealth Games gold medallists, Johannes and Jonas had now qualified for the 2020 Olympic Games, but called on other athletes to qualify soon.

“The time to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics is running out fast, so we want our athletes to qualify soon, we don’t want them to qualify only six months before the Olympics. If they qualify soon we will have more time to prepare them to be at their best,” he said.