Back When Sam Became The Man

Ntate Sam Celebrates his Comrades Marathon win

Tshabalala’s trailblazing Comrades Marathon victory 35 years ago got black runners to believe.

Today marks 35 years since the late Sam Tshabalala became the first black man to win the Comrades Marathon. It was a momentous occasion back in 1989, ironically on Republic Day – the day the oppressive apartheid regime would no doubt have wanted to be their sole preserve.

But Sam the man from Frankfort in the Free State turned a day many of his fellow blacks used to dread and hate into one of celebration, a day of reckoning. For since that day when he breasted the tape at the finish line, resplendent in his maroon and white striped vest with a visor facing back on his head and a huge smile that could have lit up a tiny village, black South African runners began to believe they could conquer the Ultimate Human Race. And they have, with 11 black South African men having won the race since Tshabalala’s trail-blazing victory.

And what a victory it was.

The enormity of the late Sam Tshabalala’s 1989 Comrades Marathon victory is not truly fathomed by many.

Granted, he is duly celebrated as the first black man to win the world-renowned ultra-marathon, but what often goes unmentioned is the fact that Tshabalala was running the Down Run for the first time.

The approximately 90km race is run during South Africa’s winter, with the start alternating between the KwaZulu-Natal cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg each year. In one year, thousands of runners run up from the coast in Durban to the mountains in the Midlands only to come back down the next year when the start is at the Pietermaritzburg City Hall.

Prior to 1989, Tshabalala had completed just two Comrades Marathon races in 1987 and 1988, both of which happened to be the Up Run. That the race was consecutively run in the same direction for those two years was to ensure the 1988 finish was in Pietermaritzburg as part of the 150th-anniversary celebrations of the Midlands city’s founding.

Tshabalala’s showing in his first two races was nothing to write home about, the man from the Free State failing to make the top ten. He finished his maiden run in 6:10:40 – some 33 minutes after Bruce Fordyce had breasted the tape ahead of 20 other men.

While he made an improvement of just over a quarter-hour the following year, it still was not a good enough run for him to earn the gold medal - Tshabalala came home in 12th place in a time of 5:54:34.

Thus, when he lined up for his first-ever start of the Comrades in the Pietermaritzburg cold on that Republic Day morning of 1989, Tshabalala was not among the favourites to ‘break’ the Bruce Fordyce monopoly on the race. The man who had won the previous eight Comrades was absent though. Fordyce had opted to skip the event after taking part in a lucrative 30,000 US dollars, 100km race that was run out in Stellenbosch just months before Comrades. 

Fordyce’s absence notwithstanding, Tshabalala had outrun the Comrades King before and was thus confident he could win the race.

“The year before I had beaten Bruce in a (56km) race called the Milo Korkie from Pretoria (Centurion) to Germiston. After that race, he said to me ‘You won’t beat me at Comrades’. But I had studied him and knew exactly what to do to win there. He did not come, but I can tell you I would have beaten him.”

As he said in many of his interviews, Tshabalala just could not believe he would be

Remember back in his day apartheid was rife and for many a black man oppressed by the whites, the road (or track as athletics and a few other sports were then opened to all races) provided a platform to prove themselves superior to their ‘baas’ (boss).

“I was inspired by Hosea Tjale to run marathons, especially Comrades. I did not like it when I saw him always being beaten by Fordyce. So, I wanted to beat Fordyce. I have always said ‘Nna nka se siuwe ke leburu’ (I cannot be beaten by a white man).”

Incredibly, it was a white man who helped Tshabalala to conquer the Comrades Marathon.

“The first race I ever won was a 21(.1km) Wilge race in Frankfort (a small town in the Free State province). I beat a lot of white men there and Manny Snyman (who has since died) did not like that I beat his runners, so he got me to join his team. He took me from Railway where I worked and gave me a new job at his firm (Spectrum) and that made it easier for me to train regularly and properly under his guidance.”

Runner and ‘baas’ got to working and Tshabalala’s first two Comrades races brought him silver medals – and great lessons too.

“From the first two races, I had figured that Comrades is a very tough race. So, I knew I had to be patient and not rush. I knew I had to have about 2500km in my legs before the race and that I had to train for both speed and endurance if I were to do well. I also had to train on hills. I needed my legs to be strong so that I did not suffer from cramps either while climbing or going downhill.”

He, however, vividly remembers that he was not among those expected to win in 1989: “I was not the favourite and most people backed Shaun Meiklejohn who had just returned from overseas.”

Also among the favourites were former gold medalists Nick Bester, Charl Mattheus and Tjale – the latter two having also raced the 100km race along with Fordyce three months earlier.

Tshabalala was a man on a mission though.

“I remember that Willie Mtolo was in the lead at the 60km mark and I was back in fourth place. As I closed in on the leaders, I watched Mtolo and realised that he was good going downhill. I was afraid of him because he had won the same Milo Korkie Marathon that I’d won earlier. But he had done it in a faster time than mine.”

Conversely, Mtolo respected Tshabalala because he strived to keep his adversary at a distance by upping the pace whenever he seemed to be closing in on him.’

“Willie had the advantage of running at home (in KwaZulu-Natal) and the people were cheering him on than they did me. It was a tough race and he still had the lead when we got to Botha’s Hill. But I eventually caught up with him and I could not believe it when he told me to go for it. I tried to encourage him to come along with me, but he was finished.”

Victory now within his grasp, Tshabalala remembers that the sight of Kingsmead Stadium infused him with renewed energy.

“I swear by the cross, when I saw the stadium it was as though I was only starting the race. And when they gave me the mayor’s message (a tradition of the race sees the leading runner being handed a scroll with a message from one city’s mayor to the other a few hundred metres from the finish line), I ran like something was chasing me. There was no way anyone was going to catch me. The excitement of being in the stadium and the crowd cheering me on was just something else. Nothing I’d ever experienced before.”

Ntate Sam reflects on his 1989 Comrades Marathon win

His win was also nothing South Africa had experienced before. Since 1921 when World War 1 veteran Vic Clapham came up with the noble idea of commemorating the South African soldiers who had endured a 2700km route march through sweltering German East Africa, a black man had never crossed the finish line first.

For all those years and since 1975 when black athletes were officially permitted to participate in the race for the first time, a Comrades Marathon victory was the preserve of white men. And in the eighties, particularly, Bruce Fordyce dominated.

Until Sam the man – resplendent in his soaking wet maroon and white striped vest, cap facing backwards and the mayor’s scroll in his hand – breasted that finish tag with a smile so bright it could have lit up a tiny village.

Tshabalala’s success, where the great Tjale as well as the hugely talented Lesotho national Vincent Rakabaele had failed, served to inspire future generations of black runners.

Since his victory back on that glorious day in 1989, the Comrades Marathon has produced 12 black champions – 11 of whom are South African. One of those, Bongmusa Mthembu, had won the race three times by 2023 while Tete Dijana won the previous two (2022 and 2023) and Edward Mothibi sort of emulated Tshabalala by winning the Up Run at the first attempt.

Years after his victory, Tshabalala had a bad car accident that even had the Comrades Marathon Association (CMA) reporting on their website that he had died. He had not though and while told by doctors that he would never run again, his religious beliefs saw him through.

“My bishop said to me, ‘Did those doctors create you? Are you not God’s child? Believe me, you will run again.’ I believed what the bishop said and true to his word I got to run again and even completed a stage run over a few days from Joburg to Cape Town. I still do some runs to this day.”

All in all, Tshabalala ran the Comrades Marathon on 16 occasions and has 13 medals to his name – that gold from his victory in 1989 and 12 silvers.

A Comrades Marathon trailblazer, Tshabalala did something unique upon winning the race – an act that has ensured he continued to enjoy the benefits of that great success till his death in 2022.

“I’ve got this house, thanks to that race. So how can I forget Comrades? If I did not have his house, maybe I would have forgotten. But now I have a proper home, thanks to Comrades. And because of it, my children and grandchildren will always know that I once won Comrades – even after I’m gone.”

Incredibly, a house was not part of the prize that day. Tshabalala should have gone home in a new set of wheels and a lot of money.

“They were giving me R30 000 and a car – a kombi – as a prize for winning. But I told them I do not want a car. In any case, I did not even have a (driver’s) licence then. I said to them, I do not care what you do with the car, all I want is a house.”

That house – whose number (1465) and the words Sam Tshabalala are in-scripted on a big silver key on the wall next to the front door – is still standing out in Zamdela township in the Fezile Dabi Municipality in the Free State and Tshabalala continued to have vivid and fond memories of his historical win from 1989 until he was laid to rest after his death two years ago from an undisclosed illness.