Times Of Swaziland: ONE ON ONE WITH SWABA PRESIDENT

ONE ON ONE WITH SWABA PRESIDENT
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By  Sabelo Gwebu on 13/01/2018 18:57:00


The story of the fall from grace of what once the country’s second best sport
after football is now legendary.
Boxing boast three medals from the Commonwealth Games dating back to 1982 when
Leonard ‘Slasher’ Makhanya won the bronze medal. That was before winning a
silver medal in the 1986 edition of the same competition. He was to be followed
by Simanga ‘The Boer’ Shiba who also brought home a bronze medal in 2006
Commonwealth Games.
Since then, there seemed to have been a dearth of top quality talent to emerge
from the sport that had its own fair share of internal disagreement. The
situation was compounded by the lack of sponsorship for the Swaziland Boxing
Association (SWABA) which put a spanner in the associations’ plans of running
its business to the point of threatening its core existence.
Next Saturday, the association will host its National Championships and already
the event will cost E40 000 and worse still, the amount is almost a third of
their annual grant from the Swaziland National Sports and Recreation Council
(SNSRC).
In the previous year, SWABA missed out on many international events because of
lack of funds. A budget of a quarter of a million of Emalangeni had been drawn
but the association had to pull out in almost all, if not all of those events.
We tied down SWABA president Pearl Dlamini to a tell-it-all interview and the
association’s plans to rekindle the once mighty sport.
Times: You have been with SWABA for many years across almost all positions,
would you say boxing is making progress? If not what are the challenges and
please outline plans to rekindle the sport
Pearl Dlamini: One would not stand on top of the roof and shout success, at the
same time; one cannot hide under the pillow in shame and cry failure. Boxing has
been on the verge of improving and this is attested by the following;
We have been prioritised as a PPP sport by SOCGA and SNSRC  Two of our boxers;
Thabiso Dlamini and Zweli Dlamini, have been granted Olympic scholarships
towards Tokyo 2020.