Why Haven't There Been Black South African HW's?

Racism?

 

Courage?






Tshabalala

 

The funny thing is that all you mention, especially Sanders, fought Black South African heavies early in their careers. So, they existed on some level.

As of late, South African boxing seems dormant at best… and the heavies… well, Francois Botha is still there highest ranked heavy, so that says a lot.

 

Flo Simba had some hype behind him before he ran into Botha....

 

No food stamps = no heavies...

 

I do not know what the deal was with boxing, but there were significant barriers to black South Africans taking part in sports under Apartheid. They were not aloud to run in marathons for example until a certain date, and after that they needed the permission of the local athletics association. It is likely that there were similar obstacles to them progressing in boxing.

 

Don't really know what I'm talking about(nothing new there) but I think the black South African race are pretty small in stature?

 

The average male height in South Africa is 5'6 1/2 ".

There is a white minority population from the Dutch and English, which is typically much taller.

The late Nelson Mandela was a boxer.

 

This is the main reason. Sub-Saharan blacks on the whole just aren't big people. I would imagine the average black male is about 2-3" shorter than the average white male in SA.
Of course there are some big black guys here too , but they are very much in the minority.

As Seamus said, there has been Courage Thshabala (who unfortunately didn't amount to much) and a decent cruiserweight from years gone by called Siza Makhatini who could have fought at heavy had he added a few more pounds, but the pickings generally have been extremely slim.

 

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I remember Thasbalala. He was a big dude with the chin of a flyweight. In terms of African heavyweight prospects, it’s Nigeria all the way. The native population there is rather big and strong and has produced heavyweights. The most notable of which were Ike Ieabuchi, and Sam Peter

 

Don't forget King Ipitan and Duncan Dokawari, both dudes who seriously passed the eye test but didn't amount to much when imported to the US scene.

As far as SA, Courage went 72-1 as an amateur with 72 KO's. His brother Ginger was a good light heavy who sadly succumbed to that nation's violence. Like I said earlier, if you look on the resumes of the successful white heavies out of SA, you see names that are certainly not of Boer origin. My guess is that they did not have access to the best training or facilities.