Mike Steven’s life changed drastically at the age of 12 when he became a double amputee after being electrocuted at the Vaaldam. After years in hospital, he could return to school, but it was in a wheelchair. Prosthetics changed his life and by the time he finished high school Stevens told BizNews he was “fully adapted, mobile and wanted to do things.” A period when Stevens could not afford his own prosthetics made him realise what other amputees, especially children go through, and he joined Jumping Kids, a non-profit organisation that provides access to prosthetic equipment for children. Stevens always enjoyed sport and being able to participate at a competitive level, he rowed, sailed and kite-surfed but the tricky Paralympic categories prevented him from following in the footsteps of his father, Geoff Stevens who was an Olympian sailor in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic. A chance meeting with another para athlete led to a path down an icy track at speeds of over 120km/h and Stevens became one of the few para bobsledders in Africa. Stevens told BizNews of his hope to include bobsleigh as a Paralympic event, where his ‘vasbyt’ comes from and how he wants to turn Jumping Kids into a social enterprise. South Africa, he said, could be a leader in Africa in providing prosthetics for the growing number of amputees. – Linda van Tilburg
From a double amputee at the age of 12 to becoming highly adapted to prosthetics
I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. When I was 12 years old, I was involved in an electrical accident. I was electrocuted by high-tension wires and had injuries to 70% of my body. My legs were the worst impacted by the injuries and required amputation to save my life and to make sure that I wasn’t impacted by infection and other things that would have killed me.
I was probably in and out of hospital for another two years with doctors telling me what they thought they could do to fix me. But I just got tired of all of that and the process and wanted to get back to my life. I went back to my old school and figured out how to move around in a wheelchair and adapt to my new situation.
I then went to high school. I spent two years getting carried up and down stairs and navigating the school in the wheelchair before I got my first set of privately made reasonable prosthetics. That changed my mobility levels because now I was able to walk and navigate stairs and find a different level of mobility and finish high school. By the time I finished high school, my brain had fully adapted, I was mobile and wanted to do things.
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Jumping Kids and the knock-on effects of disability in children
I have personal knowledge and understanding of the difference that the equipment makes. It’s a fundamental change for somebody who requires it and it takes all those limitations and minimises them. A child born with a disability that affects their mobility knocks on how they are seen in their community, how they can play with kids in the community, and whether they can go to school. Many schools won’t accept kids with a disability. So, those knock-on effects are the issue for me because if a child is disabled and then is limited by not being allowed to just enter school to get an education, then we disable them further, If we don’t intervene, if we don’t create structures that allow them to gain some form of education, some form of development, then we are allowing them to reach a point where they are not ‘unhelpable’, but in a much more difficult situation than if we had just dealt with it early. So, we offer a solution for kids as young as one-year-old. We meet them at birth, where they come to a congenital birth defect clinic, we meet their parents, we go through the process of what’s gonna be involved, and if everybody buys in, they could potentially be walking at age one. A single-leg below-knee amputee shouldn’t miss any milestones if they have the equipment.
From rowing to sailing and kitesurfing before settling on para bob
Before my accident, I played junior-level, national sports, soccer, cricket, tennis, and all sorts of things and then I had my accident and obviously, I still wanted to be involved in sports. So, I rowed with the school and played social tennis and various other sports. But I was always very physically active.
It led me to a point where we’re right by qualification, why don’t we go for it now? The Paralympics was never a goal. It just always kind of became something that I ended up knocking on the door of because I like sports and was active but I never achieved it for various classification issues. This is where the Paralympics can get quite technical where you’re classified according to disabilities. And because there are so many different things that can happen, your classification might not be what you expected it to be which would then have a knock-on effect or an implication for your competitiveness within the sport. So, for rowing, I was aiming to enter as an individual race in a skull. But I was put in a team event, which meant I had to find a teammate, which was the problem. When I found a teammate, she, unfortunately, got injured about three months before the games and that was it. That was the end of that option.
I’ve always been involved in sailing. My father went to the Barcelona Olympics for sailing. My brother was a charter boat captain in the Caribbean. I was the junior sailor pre-accident. I was getting to a competitive level and started to have the same thought again, but sailing was dropped from the games.
Then I went to a camp in Greece with a bunch of other guys and met a guy from Switzerland who was also starting out in kitesurfing… He phoned me and said, what do you think of bobsledding because he was doing it and para bobsled was trying to get into the Winter Olympics.
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The goal is to add Para Bobsleigh to the Winter Paralympics
12 nations have committed to sending a competitor to compete in the parapob season every year for at least four years for us to meet the qualification standards. Again, this is where the complications, the politics, the stuff around sports and trying to get things done, you know, can be immensely frustrating. But we’re now on the path. So, we missed inclusion for 2026 on a technicality and now we are waiting for the decision for 2030. So, as it stands right now, the decision will be made next year. If we get in for 2030, there’s a chance that we’ll be an exhibition event in 2026. So, a non-medal event. We’ll go to the games, and we’ll race to show what’s possible, but it won’t be for medals. 2030 would then be for medals. So, most of us who are currently competing and trying to get it to the games will never actually go to the games.
Where the ‘vasbyt’ comes from and being an example to younger amputees
Well, I think that part of it is a South African thing. I think it’s built into the culture of Africa that it is a tough place, so learn to deal. And then there’s family structure as well. My family has quite a stoic approach to life, and that’s been something I’ve grown up with, that there are going to be challenges and don’t get too upset or too happy or any of it. Just understand that that’s what it is and continue to push, to chase the things that are important to you and important to how you want to write your story, tell your life, and live your life. So yeah, there’s cultural, family, and life experience. I’ve had to learn all of those skills. In my accident, when you spend a year in hospital, essentially by yourself. You are in the room by yourself for long periods. Your life is different. Your whole world is reshaped, there’s an element of what’s next. And I think that you have the worst-case scenarios and the bad stuff that floats through your head, but I think everybody still has goals and desires. And my approach to life has always been to find those things that are important to me, the things that I want to do and the way that I want to live my life and tell my story and then chase those. I have come to realise that I am an example for all of the Jumping Kids that I assist and my approach to things and the way that I live is going to be seen by them and might be an example for them and a reflection of what they need to do and I have to live up to that.
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South Africa can be a leader in Africa in prosthetics
I believe that the prosthetic industry is still operating and using techniques that have been around since World War II and componentry and here are ways to revitalise the industry. What I learned from Johan, he redeveloped socket technology, and the way the sockets are made, which changed the business workflow. I’m then looking at the way the businesses are done in most parts of the country and it’s done on a small scale and manage niche amounts of customers. If we start looking at the scale of this, and we upscale, and we train, and we set up a sort of central fabrication, employ prosthetists, train them to do the work the way that we would do the work, it offers multiple opportunities in terms of being able to deal with the backlog of issues within the country, firstly, but then within Africa as a whole. We can become a leader in the continent for the delivery of these services, which means we can operate continent-wide and expand. And then we can change the narrative around people with disabilities. So, we can give them the equipment which makes them mobile, which allows them to work. A simple thing like somebody who loses their leg below the knee in a car accident or some sort of trauma, they’re now on crutches until they get a solution. Solutions given by the state can take anywhere from three to five years. That’s three to five years of not being able to work.
If I can give them a solution, if I find a way to make this cheaper, easier, and more accessible, we give them a solution, those crutches disappear within a day, and their hands are free. That frees them up to carry a cup and a plate in their house. Firstly, it frees them up to work and be able to earn an income for themselves and their family.
