Photographer Johann Meintjes at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Picture: Gymnastics South Africa /Facebook
Fresh from his experience at the Olympics, South African photographer Johann Meintjes was appointed as the new Para-Gymnastics Coordinator for Gymnastics South Africa.
“The Gymnastics Association of South Africa got a message from the Paralympics that they’re going to start gymnastics as a Paralympic sport. But they’re looking at the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane in Australia,” Meintjes told The Citizen.
“They’ve actually started para-gymnastics in South Africa and they knew about me that I was a gymnast. They contacted me and asked if I’d be interested.”
Meintjes will serve in the role for the next six months, focusing on coordinating Gymnastics SA’s efforts to further develop its inclusion of athletes with a disability into the sport.
“Johann is the ideal person to coordinate our efforts to make gymnastics more inclusive of athletes with a disability,” said President of Gymnastics South Africa, Adele Heine.
Meintjes’ involvement in gymnastics goes back more than 50 years.
He represented South Africa twice at the Trampoline and Tumbling World Championships and served on the Northern Transvaal Executive Committee.
In 1982, Meintjes’ budding career in gymnastics was cut short by an injury, which left Johann paralysed from the waist down.
After that he focused his energy on coaching and was the national coach of the tumbling team at the 1990 World Champs in Germany.
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Meintjes could’ve easily given up on life following the life-changing accident in his youth but he found passion in something else after the devastation of losing the ability to use his legs. It speaks to his resilience.
“When I got hurt, I decided there that ‘you’ve got two ways of taking this’,” Meintjes said on his frame of mind after the 1982 accident. “‘You can either give up or you can go on be positive about everything.’ I told myself that you’ve got to be positive in life.”
Meintjes went into teaching, where he worked for 32 years. “I was the first disabled teacher at that time as well,” he said.
He taught at a primary school in Pretoria; teaching Afrikaans, computer literacy and even physical training from his wheelchair.
He got into photography through his teaching in 2011. “I had to get some other type of activity at the school to teach the kids and I thought, at that time, that photography might be a good thing to do.”
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Since 2011, Meintjes has been a keen photographer and through his adventurous spirit, he became the first quadriplegic photographer at a Summer Olympic Games in Paris in 2024.
“It took me back to those days when I started gymnastics; I enjoyed that enormously, I remembered when I took part myself.
“The desire of being at the Olympics, the vision of being at the Olympics was part of my life but I couldn’t do it because of my accident that I had in 1982,” he said.
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