A decade after Apostle Joy Museba predicted international success for the Kwekwe sprinter, church members see his victory in Dakar as the fulfilment of that prophecy.
By Farai Makopa (MCIJ)
KWEKWE — The result broke online in Kwekwe — but the roar that followed sounded like it came from the stadium itself. News travels fast on a screen; excitement travels faster in a hometown.
And right now, this hometown is standing at the gate, eager to welcome him home. The journey covered roughly 6,383 kilometres — the distance between Kwekwe and Dakar. That is how far greatness is willing to travel. That is how far champions can be found.
They’ll tell you Ropafadzo Mzondo ran 21.04 seconds. But read that number the way you’d read a verse, and it lands like Matthew 21:4 (NIV) — “This took place to fulfil what was spoken through the prophet.” The stopwatch didn’t simply record a time; it echoed a promise like thunder answering lightning.
Before the world knew his name, in 2016, the Man of God, Apostle Joy Museba of the Midlands-centred New Creation Life Ministries International (NCL), prophesied over Ropafadzo’s life and athletic career, declaring that God would make him a sign and a wonder on the world stage. He was a little boy still in primary school at the time — too young to run for his school, let alone his country. Yet the word went out. A decade later, standing on the top step in Dakar, that word became flesh. Podium from prophecy — right down to the time on the clock.
And the year behind this gold? Unreal. February: he broke a national record and qualified for the World Championships in Oregon — proof the prophecy was already moving before anyone was watching. June: most athletes his age would have parked the spikes and opened the textbooks. He did both — sat his O Level Cambridge exams and pulled 4As, 3Bs and 2Cs. August: in Oregon, he became the first Zimbabwean ever to reach the semifinals at the U20 World Championships, and set another national record on the way. September: two golds at COSSASA. Today: gold at the Youth Olympics — Zimbabwe’s first ever, and the nation’s only medal at these Games.
Read that again. Record, exams, record, medals, history. That is not a lucky year. That is 2026, the declarative year of “Walking in Dominion” for NCL — and Ropafadzo has lived it out on the track, in the exam hall, and on the world stage. Not waiting for circumstances to change, but taking ground in every sphere.
Champions have always been forged in secret. In 1924, Eric Liddell, then just 22, trained quietly for the Paris Olympics and won gold in the 400 metres, a man whose discipline was shaped by faith long before the crowd knew his name.
In 1936, Jesse Owens, also 22, won four gold medals in Berlin after years of unseen preparation, running before a world that had already decided what he could not do. Nobody clapped during their training years. Nobody cheered their early mornings. But the crowd always comes when the work is done.
Ropafadzo is nowhere near their age — yet here he stands, already rewriting records they never touched at his stage. Age is not a limit when prophecy is involved.
And that is the grace of the house. The word spoken over Ropafadzo did not remain a sermon — it travelled from Kwekwe to Dakar, from the altar to the track. The prophecy did not stay in the pulpit. It ran. FAST!
Behind every record is a father who once ran himself. Liberty Mzondo was a sprinter in his own time, but, as he told The Herald, he could not go far — his parents could not support him the way he now supports his son. So when he saw the same gift in Ropafadzo, he made a decision: “Let me put all the resources that I have towards him so that he will achieve what I desired to achieve.”
Ropafadzo has not forgotten. According to Olympics.com, he thanked “everyone back home… especially my coach, coach White, my parents and my little sisters,” and said of his father: “Without him, I wouldn’t have been a Youth Olympic gold medallist right now.”
Beside that father stands a mother — no headlines, no cameras, just the quiet, daily ministry of a parent who believed before the medals came. Some victories are carried in prayer long before they are carried on a track.
To every young person in the ministry — the NCL youths known as the Eagles — he sat where they sit. He wrote Cambridge papers like they do. Isaiah 40:31 says those who hope in the Lord will soar on wings like eagles. Ropafadzo has just proved the wings work. If God did it, is doing it, keeps doing it for him, He can do it for them too.
And to Goldridge College — the school in Newtown, Kwekwe, where he is a student — this gold medal is theirs too. A young man from their classrooms has not only put the school’s name on the world map; he has shown every student walking those same corridors that the distance between a hometown and history is not as far as it looks.
A name that means Blessing has just blessed a nation. Zimbabwe is proud. History is yours, Ropafadzo; and the blessing is ours!
