About The Gijima Foundation

The Gijima Foundation grew out of a small, community-led initiative by the Manguzi Hospital rehabilitation and dietetics team — a local sports day designed to encourage healthy lifestyles and raise visibility for people with disabilities in the Manguzi sub-district of KwaZulu-Natal.

In its first year, 36 runners and 6 wheelchair users took part. The event was modest, local, and deeply community-rooted. What it had — from the very beginning — was heart.

Barring the two years spanning the COVID-19 pandemic, Manguzi Gijima has been held annually ever since. Each year it has grown: in participant numbers, in ambition, in the diversity of people with disabilities represented, and in the depth of its advocacy work.

Today, close to 2,000 people participate annually. More than 40% are people with a wide variety of disabilities. In 2025, 150 wheelchair users competed, with a record 37 athletes taking on the MedBull wheelchair challenge course. Participants now come from as far as Mozambique and Swaziland.

What began as a sports day has become a platform — for accountability, for community healing, for attitudinal change, and for proving, year after year, that the gap between ability and disability is far smaller than most people think.