FLORIS STEENKAMP
GERHARD Mans Junior, the son of rugby legend Gerhard Mans, who was killed when a vehicle knocked him off his bicycle on Windhoek’s Western Bypass on Wednesday, has opened up about the family’s grief and his father’s character.
Mans’ death comes only two weeks after his 60th birthday.
Mans is reportedly the third road fatality in the cycling fraternity in the past five years.
The other two were Ingrid Scholtz and Elroy Beukes.
“My father was a good example to us. His perseverance, the kind way in which he treated people, no matter who you are, his ability to take control of a situation, his immense general knowledge, and his commitment to maintain a learning curve in everything he did were qualities he instilled in us,” Mans Junior says.
He was a toddler in the years of his father’s epic ascent on the rugby ladder in Namibia in the late 1980s and the early years after Namibia attained independence.
Mans’ rugby career landed him 100 tries and the captaincy of first the South West African team and then the post-independence Namibian rugby team.
WITNESS ACCOUNT
Jaco Lamprecht, a cycling teammate and close friend of the late Mans, yesterday told The Namibian a cycling commuter who lives in the area witnessed the fatal accident on Wednesday and left before the police could interview him.
Lamprecht says he managed to get the man’s contact details.
He himself was cycling a few hundred metres behind Mans on Wednesday, Lamprecht says, but did not see the accident taking place as he was looking in the direction of Mans Junior, who at that moment was cycling from the opposite direction on the south-northbound section of the dual carriageway.
“I saw Gerhard Junior approaching from the front and I was looking in his direction to greet him. When I looked ahead again, I saw police vehicles pulling over to block the highway. It was only when I reached the police vehicles that I realised there was an accident and that Gerhard was involved,” he said.
When Mans Junior turned around, he also arrived at the scene where he discovered his father was killed.
Lamprecht said he was present when police officers conducted a breathalyser test on the driver of the vehicle that knocked over and killed Mans.
“The test showed the man’s breath-alcohol content as 0,23, and the maximum legal limit is 0,36. To my view the driver was within the legal alcohol limits,” he said.
The vehicle, however, displayed no licence disc on the windscreen, had no registration plates and upon opening the luggage compartment, officers found a stack of vehicle registration documentation and dozens of number plates, Lamprecht said.
“People also drew their own conclusions from the WhatsApp that the police were chasing the driver, and that this caused the accident. From my perspective that is also not the case. This was an accident. It is to my view a coincidence that the two police vehicles were in close proximity at that critical moment,” he said.
Chief inspector Elifas Kuwinga this week said an investigation is still ongoing into the matter, and declined to comment on Lamprecht’s allegations.
AWARENESS NEEDED
“We are calling for tougher action,” Axel Theissen, the president of the Namibian Cycling Federation, yesterday said.
He said what makes Mans’ death so much more tragic is the fact that the Namibian Cycling Federation is just two weeks shy of erecting signs on the Kupferberg and Daan Viljoen Roads west of the capital, warning drivers about the presence of cyclists along the road.
“We have been working on this project for a number of months now, and we are working towards expanding that to the Western Bypass,” Theissen said.
