Wheelchair won’t keep this sports lover away from the field
WESTDENE – Be alive or live your life, decision that brought purpose and meaning to a life that was wheelchair bound.
Extremely positive, highly disciplined, remarkably hardworking and overly dedicated, these are the first few characteristics that come to mind after conversing with Palesa Manaleng.
Manaleng is a Westdene resident and University of Johannesburg (UJ) student. She is wheelchair-bound and is a hand-cycling champion.
Manaleng ended up in a wheelchair after a cycling accident in Westdene when her brakes failed going downhill in 2014. She crashed into the palisade fence which surrounds the UJ rugby stadium and dislocated her spine, broke two ribs, punctured a lung, fractured a shoulder and also sustained head injuries.
This realisation of not being able to walk or stand again did not kill her spirit as sport gave her a reason to stay optimistic and keep pushing. The wheelchair racer said, “When I got to the Netcare Rehab Centre and the physios said I could take part in sports I was like yeah, we doing something.” Manaleng had always been a sports lover having played netball, soccer, tennis and did swimming. She now plays wheelchair basketball and racing and does weightlifting.
In 2015, Manaleng attended UJ and she was introduced to a world of disability sports. She has entered various competitions and her most noteworthy race was last year. “The furthest I’ve cycled was from Pretoria to Cape Town which was 2 300km. I was part of an organisation called One Chance At Life. They raise awareness around disability and one of the ways they do that is by doing this annual race.”
The race took 10 days and went from the nation’s capital into the Karoo, along the Namibian border and down to the Mother City.
Sport has become the biggest part of Manaleng’s life. “The major thing wasn’t that I could never walk again, it was that I would never play sport again. For me sport is like breathing, it took a lot of ups and downs. There were moments where I’d fall apart because I’d think I wouldn’t be able to be who I was but you grow. You can either be alive or live your life and I choose to live my life.”
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