Gold medal for local boxer
A COMBINATION of discipline and passion has paid dividends for a KwaMashu woman who has won the Zone 4 African Regional Boxing Championships in Angola.
Nomusa Ngema, 24, won a gold medal in the flyweight division at the recent annual tournament.
Ngema, who has won a silver and a bronze medal in the past two years, said the reason for her confidence was her determination.
“Having experience definitely played a role, as during the fight I saw that my opponent was less experienced than me.”
Ngema had been preparing for the fight for three months. She had been boxing since 2006 when she joined her local KwaMashu indoor sports gym.
Asked why she decided to choose boxing as a sport, Ngema said: “I wanted to do something sporty and that would keep me busy. If you play sport in general, you don’t get involved in bad things. It keeps you focused.”
This was made easier by the support of her family. But her focus is not only in the ring.
Ngema has set her sights on becoming professional next year and would like to emulate the likes of welterweight boxer Thulani Mbenge, who is her role model.
Her trainer, Basil Kotelo, said: “She must be proud of her achievement.”
Kotelo, a former professional boxer, said Ngema’s generation had more opportunities than his.
But it is not only fighting skills that are taught in the KwaMashu indoor sports gym.
“We teach respect and how they should be respectful of people in the community,” Kotelo said.
He did not treat Ngema differently from other fighters at the gym because she was a woman, he said, pointing out that she trained just as hard as her peers.
Her hard work and efforts had led to Ngema becoming a role model for other young fighters in the gym, he said.