True Namibian Heroes

Frankie Fredericks holds the world record as the only man to have run the 200m (indoors) under 20 seconds (at 19.92 seconds). He set the record in 1994.

Johanna Amunjela is among the first scholars in the world to investigate the role that specific proteins have in how cancer develops.

Dr Japie van Zyl is one of the scientists involved in the successful Curiosity Mars mission with the most technologically advanced rover ever built by NASA.

Dr Helena Ndume is an ophthalmologist whose philanthropic efforts have restored the vision of over 30,000 Namibians through free intra-ocular lens implants.

Aron Hamukwaya digitised the game that is casually referred to as African Chess. Aron won the Youth Innovator grant from the NCRST to help him fully develop the game in 2015.

Simon Petrus is a secondary school pupil who created a mobile phone using radio frequencies that does not require a SIM card, nor airtime to make calls to anyone

Ricardo Mannetti competed for the Namibian national football team, the Brave Warriors, from 1994. He led the team to win its first international Trophy at the COSAFA Cup

Lucketts Swartbooi won the Rössing Marathon with a time of 2:11:23. This record is yet to be broken. Lucketts won silver at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart.

Günter Heimbeck is a retired professor of mathematics, researching geometry. He is the first Namibian, perhaps the only, to have a scientific sub-discipline named after him – the Heimbeck Planes

Johanna Benson is a track and field Paralympian athlete and is Namibia’s first Paralympic gold medalist. Johanna was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at five months.