Like any boxer hailing from the Eastern Cape, Masibulele Siqwela knows he has a lot riding on his shoulders as he makes his way in one of the toughest of sports. “Yes, people expect a lot from me. They all say that the Eastern Cape is the Mecca of boxing.”
Siqwela is sitting opposite me in a room at the Crowne Plaza hotel, where some Team SA members are staying, overlooking the banks of the River Clyde in Glasgow, with the BBC building across the water. He’s already made news in his home town of KwaNojoli (formerly Somerset East), which is a 260km drive inland from East London, through Mdantsane, Dikeni, Adelaide and Bedford. Perhaps he will feature on BBC International at some stage.
He’s a quietly-spoken, yet confident young man, who makes his Commonwealth Games debut against Zambia’s Mqengo Mwale on Sunday. “I’m not scared of him, I’m not scared of anyone. I respect him and my opponents, but I’m not scared.”
Win or lose at these Games, Siqwela has already won at life. He confesses to living a “clean, healthy life” and found boxing at the age of 15 when his now late father took him to a local boxing club.
“I played soccer but my father said I must try another sport as well. And he took me to the hall,” he says.
“I was scared because I was only 15 and I had watched it and told myself, ‘nah, I don’t want to box and be beaten up,’ but look what happened and here I am today. It was the day after I walked in there and watched other boxers that I stopped soccer and started boxing. My father was a boxer so every day after training I would go home and we would do some shadow boxing and he’d teach me some lessons.”
I remind him how much gravitas his first name, Masibulele, carries in the fight game. It was Masibulele Makepule who earned the nickname “Hawk” and first competed as an amateur at the 1994 Commonwealth Games, before going on to earn fame and fortune as a professional. He too came from the Eastern Cape.
Because he was born in 2003, I rattle off a few names of the giants who came from the region around the time he was entering the world. Vuyani Bungu, Welcome Ncita and then I tell him there was one of the finest boxers I’ve had the privilege of seeing, Nkosana “Happy Boy” Mgxaji, who can be considered the father figure of Eastern Cape boxing.
He was a gifted fighter and who aficionados consider the best South African boxer to ever win a world title, who died prematurely aged 61 in 2011. I tell Siqwela that “Happy Boy” at times used to climb through the ropes with the smell and look of having “smoked” in the dressing room. He laughs. “Really? I don’t smoke, cigarettes or anything else! I spend a lot of time living in the house of my coach with about seven or eight of us who are friends and boxers at the same club.”
It’s my fault that I don’t know isiXhosa but his English is the best of the Team SA boxers in Glasgow. And I thank him for taking the effort to speak English. The thing about boxing is that it has a universal language. “Are you southpaw or orthodox,” I ask. And when talking boxing one can use the hands as a descriptor. “Southpaw,” he replies, “but I can switch.”
“Do you carry power and which is the one that can put your opponent to sleep?” He holds out his left hand. And then he points to his liver. “That punch… if I catch you there you will go down. My one opponent, I hit him there in maybe the first 15 seconds and he couldn’t get up.”
The 23-year-old has had to drop back to the bantamweight division (55kg) because there is no featherweight (57kg) category at these Games. It doesn’t faze him. “When I’m in the gym I get down to 53kg, 54kg, so making the 55kg weight is no problem. Yesterday I weighed 56kg so there won’t be a problem making weight on Sunday.”
With administrative record-keeping unreliable at best, I ask him how many fights he has had. There’s no immediate response. “More than 50?” I ask. “A lot more than 50! More than 200 even, maybe 230-something.” And wins, losses? “I’ve had a lot of wins. The last time I lost was last year in Russia, on points.”
The latter is an important addition. He takes pride in never having been stopped and his face shows no obvious signs of scarring. He does run a finger across his right eyebrow where he says he got stitches after being cut in the Seychelles. “I won the fight though!” he is quick to add.
As with many places in South Africa, there is crime in his environment and it’s a tribute to his late father and then uncle and boxing coach that Siqwela has never fallen foul of the temptations that lie outside of the ring. He also says that he has never had to use his fists against anyone outside of the ring. “They know me in Somerset East,” he laughs. “I’ve never had to defend myself, but I know how to.”
He is hoping to continue his boxing education with a positive Commonwealth Games experience and then remain in the amateurs for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. “I want to get a medal there and then turn professional. I still have a lot of things to do.”
He looks at the draw for Sunday’s fight and we see that he’s in the blue corner. “Blue or red, doesn’t matter to me. I’ve seen my opponent and he’s good. But I’m better.”
And so, yet another Eastern Cape boxing product starts his journey on one of the biggest stages an amateur can encounter.