Memoirs of a Comrades Champion, Ludwick Mamabolo, by Professor Mpho Ngoepe

Against seemingly impossible odds, a determined young boy from a South African village rises from the dust to become one of the world’s greatest ultra-distance athletes. A win in the grueling Comrades Marathon requires this, and cannot be done, unless, in that moment the winning men’s athlete has become the greatest of all humans who runs. Stir the Dust, Memoirs of a Comrades champion reads like a fable. And yet, it is not one. 

Stir the Dust is the remarkable real-life story of the journey to immortality by Ludwick Modibe Mamabolo (Lodi). For all Comrades Champions, men and women are indeed immortal. Since the first running of this most glorious of human endeavors in 1921 hundreds-of-thousands have started and finished the Comrades Marathon, all of them winners. Many have tried to arrive as the first human to cross the finish line but only an elite group of 51 in the men’s category have done so. Of this elite group, only twelve are Black South Africans. Notwithstanding that black people (and women) were barred from competing until 1975, winning Comrades from the starting point of South Africa’s unequal history is an achievement almost beyond comprehension. That some have done so, and on more than one occasion in some cases, or have won multiple top ten-finisher gold medals at Comrades (as Lodi has done) are stories that must be made available to the world to be shared and known. Like all of us, these humans will pass. But we dare not let the tales of what was accomplished to pass too. 

    But Stir the Dust is not a book about politics or racial segregation. It is a book about transcending these invisible lanes, and traces the lines of how dreams and miracles always happen when South Africa and South Africans are inspired and come together. Indeed, in the year in which Lodi had his greatest triumph, it was necessary to win Comrades twice, first on race day, and then again, through an even more difficult terrain, following a protracted and hapless attempt to discredit an accomplishment which was fully earned and completely deserved. This confirmation of the first win in this Comrades year rose above all obstacles imposed by those who would try to discredit. It was in the spirit of our rainbow nation that people came together to ensure that the name Ludwick Mamabolo is correctly recorded in history.   

This then is an important story of what it takes to lead, as Lodi has done, on and off the road. There are other stories of many great South African distance runners which must also be told. Sadly, these stories have not been recorded into written words yet. Until they are an important history of a unique element of South Africa, in which we have run together, and in the same direction will forever be lost. 

Like me, other readers of Stir the Dust will recognize the importance of this story as a trailblazer in recording the remarkable journeys that Comrades dreamers have taken on the road to accomplishing the impossible. “Everything is impossible, until it is done” said our beloved Madiba. This book inspires us all, not only to do the impossible, but to record the stories of all of those who have done so. It was not surprising that the book sold over a 1000 copies in the first month of its publication.

*Book Review by Graham Moore (November 2020)