NELSON MANDELA\u2019S death in 2013 resulted in an outpouring of tribute and veneration such as no other political or world figure could ever hope to inspire in modern times, perhaps with the exception of Muhammad Ali. And as with Mandela, it is no coincidence that Ali also dedicated himself to confronting racial oppression and in so doing became a global icon. What Mandela \u2014 or Madiba as he was more affectionately known \u2014 also had in common with Ali was his love of boxing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Ali, boxing was the platform that enabled him to touch the hearts of millions at home and abroad, both as the heavyweight champion of the world in the ring and a champion in the struggle against racial oppression outside\u00a0it.<\/p>\n
Mandela, meanwhile, used the sport to build the fitness, discipline, and the mental fortitude he called upon to help him in his monumental struggle against apartheid in South Africa. In his autobiographical work, Long Walk To Freedom, Mandela\u2019s love of the sport shines through. \u201cI did not enjoy the violence of boxing so much as the science of it,\u201d he writes. \u201cI was intrigued by how one moved one\u2019s body to protect oneself, how one used a strategy both to attack and retreat, how one paced oneself over a\u00a0match.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the same passage, he goes on to state: \u201cBoxing is egalitarian. In the ring, rank, age, colour and wealth are irrelevant \u2026 I never did any real fighting after I entered politics. My main interest was in training. I found the rigorous exercise to be an excellent outlet for tension and stress. After a strenuous workout, I felt both mentally and physically\u00a0lighter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mandela also revealed that he was \u201cnever an outstanding boxer.\u201d But then he didn\u2019t have to be in order to use the sport to his advantage. This he also made clear. \u201cIt was a way of losing myself in something that was not the\u00a0struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a way of taking his mind off his participation in the struggle for the freedom of his people and to replenish his strength, boxing was key in helping to forge the determination he needed to prevail against the seemingly insurmountable weight of the state machine of structural oppression that defined white South Africa. In this regard, boxing served not only a physical purpose but, just as importantly, a psychological and a spiritual\u00a0one.<\/p>\n
Ali, likewise, used his exploits in the ring to help him overcome his struggles outside it, not least of which the years he spent battling his own government over his refusal to be drafted into the US armed forces to serve in Vietnam. Ali: \u201cOnly a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is\u00a0even.\u201d<\/p>\n
The development of Mandela\u2019s and Ali\u2019s personalities were informed by the injustices suffered by their people in white-dominated societies during the 1950s and \u201960s. The boxing gym in such circumstances was a sanctuary, offering a temporary escape and providing the means to hold on to their self-esteem. Both men benefited from the bonds of solidarity and human connectedness that were afforded them in the process of sparring and training with other\u00a0fighters.<\/p>\n
In his later autobiographical work, Conversations with Myself \u2014 consisting of letters, interviews, and fragments of his writings \u2014 Mandela recounts his fond memories of the gym he trained in while living in Soweto as a young man. The gym was called the Donaldson Orlando Community Centre (DOCC), and Mandela trained there in the early 1950s. In a letter to his daughter Zinzi, written while incarcerated on Robben Island where he spent 18 of his 27 years in jail, he writes: \u201cThe walls of the DOCC are drenched with the sweet memories that will delight me for\u00a0years.\u201d<\/p>\n
His daughter never received the letter, however, confiscated as it was by the prison\u00a0authorities. But it illustrates, nonetheless, the central importance of the gym in the life of this then young revolutionary\u00a0leader.<\/p>\n
Just days before Mandela passed away, Ali paid tribute to him in an article to mark the upcoming release that Christmas of the movie of his life Long Walk to\u00a0Freedom.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know something about protest,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI know well the feelings and questions that run through the mind of those who stand against a system, braving everything for a cause. It is never easy. The personal price is high, but the greatest of people persevere for the greater good. Modern South Africa is built on the back of Mr Mandela\u2019s\u00a0sacrifice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ali continues in the same piece: \u201cIt still amazes me, even to this day, that a man could give up two and a half decades of his life, emerge from prison and forgive his\u00a0imprisoners.\u201d<\/p>\n
Truly it is something to contemplate, the bond shared by two of history\u2019s great icons \u2014 men who were born and lived thousands of miles apart on different continents, yet were brothers in the struggle against oppression and injustice and whose characters were forged\u00a0to a large extent in the\u00a0environs of the boxing\u00a0gym.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it was just as another great revolutionary, Irishman Terence MacSwiney, said: \u201cVictory is not won by those who can inflict the most but those who can endure the most.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali were men whose ability to endure enabled them to overcome. And it was in their overcoming that their respective legends were\u00a0forged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NELSON MANDELA\u2019S death in 2013 resulted in an outpouring of tribute and veneration such as no other political…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-733588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}