Dingaan Thobela, the boxer who was one of the symbols in the fight against Apartheid, has died

Also Nelson Mandela he loved boxing. He defined himself as a slow heavyweight who didn’t even have a powerful punch. Yet he loved her, because he saw in the folds of suffering the sense of redemption, of social revenge. Boxing meant a lot in the fight against black apartheid in South Africa, even when a white man got into the ring. Gerrie Coetzee, who had fought for the world heavyweight title (managing to win it on the third occasion), was labeled as the ‘white hope’, a way of speaking in an era in which blacks dominated the queen category. But he forcefully specified: “I am no one’s hope, I fight for everyone, white and black”. Facts, characters, words that make it clear how much he counted in South African boxing Dingaan Thobela, said “The Rose of Soweto”, who passed away at the age of 57 after a long illness. “As we celebrate 30 years of South African democracy, we mourn the loss of an athlete who did so much to elevate South African sport through his success in boxing,” Sports Minister Zizi Kodwa said. “He inspired the nation, future boxers and champions of Soweto.”

Good morning he was not a champion and, outside South Africa, he did not reach the global popularity of Coetzee. But he was a good champion and above all a symbol, a factor that in the segregationist regime had a meaning that went beyond a title. In any case, he has won many titles. Two, even world championships, and in weight categories that are very distant from each other.

He started in super featherweight in 1986, 4 years later he won the lightweight world title in Texas, beating Mauricio Aceves. She showed it off in Johannesburg, defending it from the attack of the Puerto Rican Antonio Rivera, someone who had been able to beat before the limit Giovanni Parisi. He lost it and then regained it against Tony Lopez, in the end he surrendered to the very strong Kyrgyzstan Nazarov.

But he still had a lot to say in the ring. He rose through various categories, but maintained his competitiveness and managed to win the super middleweight world championship against the British Glenn Catley. He goes to a South Africa very different from the one he had known in childhood Soweto. And this is also thanks to the many examples of people like him.