A battle for BoBA’s future
... as boxing association elects new exco
The Botswana Boxing Association ( BoBA) elective Annual General Meeting is expected to convene this weekend in Gaborone. The top seat of the association is expected to be hotly contested in a four horse race that will see a fight for the very soul of the once thriving sporting code.
The past two decades have seen the amateur sports body thrive, as they virtually dominated regional competitions like AUSC Region 5, formerly Zone 6.
Local amateur boxers went on to conquer the African continent and even drew the attention at elite competitions like the Olympics. Names like Khumiso Ikgopoleng, Oteng Oteng, Healer Modiradilo, Tirafalo Seoko, Gilbert Khunwane, Thato Batshegi and the current National team coach, Master Luza became household names because of their international exploits in the ring.
It was Khumiso Ikgopoleng who once made it to the quarter finals of the Sydney Olympics at one point. Nevertheless, the fortunes of local amateur boxing have
since gone on a gradual downward spiral as fewer and fewer athletes qualified for both the Olympic Games and AIBA World championships. In 2012, lower weight division boxer, Oteng Oteng was BoBA’s sole representative at the London Olympics while the sport code was not represented at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, Brazil.
At the time local amateur boxing critics blamed Dr Thato Patlakwe and his committee’s decision to host a huge number of bouts during interclub tournaments. This new format saw tournaments starting at noon and running well into the night. BoBA critics came out to argue that quality was being compromised as elite boxers were billed or matched with junior athletes in the same event and therefore turned away boxing enthusiasts. The downward spiral saw less and less supporters coming out to cheer their favourite pugilists during inter clubs.
Furthermore, BoBA went on a sponsorship drought that saw the association running without sponsorship for close to a decade following the departure of KBL’s Mooka Mageu that had become synonymous with the sport. However, there are some positives that have comes from the way the sport was administered in the past decade; the female boxing division is one such. Names like Keneilwe Rakhudu, Keamogetse Kenosi and others appeared for the first time and changed how the sport was viewed as women were able to show that they could hold their own in the full contact collision sport.
The rise of female boxing pretty much justified the loaded interclub plan that BoBA had deployed. Perhaps, the historic Olympic qualification of Keamogetse Kenosi to the recent Tokyo Olympics is the validation and legacy that will be left behind by the committee that has administered the sport for the past eight or so years. Meanwhile, BoBA vice president, Gilbert Khunwane is expected to battle it out against the incumbent Secretary- General, Moremi Lefiri, former executive committee member, Dirang Thipe and Botswana National Olympic Committee ( BNOC) board member and former BoBA president, Michael Moroka. The incumbent, Dr Thato Patlakwe is not seeking re- election after serving two terms.