EXTRACT | How the ANC bopped Mohammed Ali on the nose

My foray into professional boxing began with a phone call from Sol in February 1978. Until then, I had been a fan, but I hardly had the makings of a big-time promoter like Don King. I tuned in whenever Muhammad Ali fought, and I once found myself behind Henry Cooper in an airport queue. I even entered the schoolboy boxing championships once until a punch on the nose convinced me that tears and blindness were not a tactical advantage.

The call came through to me in New York after I had just watched the televised fight in which Ali lost his heavyweight crown to Leon Spinks, a rank outsider with only seven professional bouts on his CV.

For seven rounds, Ali had barely thrown a punch, “rope-adoping” against the ropes, arms tucked in and gloves shielding his face, while Spinks pummelled him. He had promised the television company that the fight would last at least eight rounds so that they could air the inter-round adverts they had sold.

Then Ali began to dance, jabbing with precision, proving who was still the master. By the 14th round, the scores were level. But Ali, at 36, had miscalculated. He was spent by the 15th and final round, and Spinks nicked the points.

After the fight, Ali, never shy, still declared himself “the People’s Champion” and demanded a rematch.

I picked up the call. Sol, strategic as ever, came straight to the point.

“Howzit, Pete? Did you watch the fight?”

“Of course.”

“I was thinking … why don’t you see if you can get the rematch for Bophuthatswana?”

I reeled. I had no contact with Ali and no clout in boxing, and no-one in the US had heard of Bophuthatswana. Sol added, almost casually, “It would be worth $1m. And it would impress the old man.” By “old man” he meant Chief Lucas Mangope.

“Yes, Sol,” I said weakly. “Good idea. I’ll see what I can do.”

There was no way I would be able to get Ali to come to some dodgy “homeland” called Bophuthatswana! Internationally, the South African apartheid government’s “homeland” ruse convinced nobody. The ANC, though banned inside South Africa, was powerful in exile, lobbying foreign governments to deny recognition. Not a single state outside Pretoria acknowledged Bop as independent. It existed in legal fiction only; a “country” that could only trade with South Africa, a Potemkin nation in which passports were useless beyond the border.

Yet to Mangope, stern and schoolmasterly, Bop was real. He had a parliament in Mmabatho, an Erector Set independence stadium and the promise of casinos. And to Sol, that was enough. If Swaziland and Lesotho could pull South Africans across borders to drab and dull casinos, how much more might Bop achieve with something grander? And as far as my boss was concerned, what better way to announce the homeland and Sun City to the world than with Ali in the ring?

My first hurdle was Bob Arum, Ali’s promoter. I had no way of contacting him, until I remembered Gregory Brown — a six-foot-six, self-styled television producer I had once encountered in Mauritius. Gregory claimed to know everyone. Did he know Arum? “Of course,” he said. I was convinced he was lying. But within hours he had “secured” an appointment at Arum’s office.

“Meet me at the Waldorf. And rent a stretch.” A stretch limousine, in New York, is what happens when you saw a Cadillac in half, weld in 10 extra feet and glue it back together.

“Why?” I asked.

“To impress,” said Gregory. I could picture the grin on his face.

“But what if Arum’s on the 50th floor? He won’t see it.”

“Always be prepared to impress,” Gregory intoned, as if quoting scripture.

Arum, a Harvard-educated tax lawyer turned promoter, was bemused by Gregory’s claims of friendship but pricked up his ears when I mentioned a $1m contribution

Arum, a Harvard-educated tax lawyer turned promoter, was bemused by Gregory’s claims of friendship but pricked up his ears when I mentioned a $1m contribution. His office was on the 25th floor of a tower block on Fifth Avenue, so the “stretch” went unseen. Of course, he had never heard of Bophuthatswana. Why would he have? But he listened as I tried to paint a compelling picture.

In turn, Arum explained Ali had lost because he’d promised TV executives at least eight rounds in order to maximise the advertising revenue. Spinks was supposed to be cannon fodder, and Ali had turned the match into a farce by refusing to throw a punch early on. Now the joke had backfired, and he was desperate for a rematch. The problem: boxing’s governing bodies, the WBA and WBC, required Spinks to fight Ken Norton next. Arum thought the WBA might bend. The WBC was intransigent.

We adjourned for lunch at the Friars Club, the popular haunt of New York comedians and performers. Amid the signed celebrity portraits, I outlined Sol’s plan: Southern Sun, Mangope, Ali, the independence stadium. Arum was no showman, but he was shrewd. Over corned beef, he quizzed me on Sol, Southern Sun and the practicalities of staging a fight in Mmabatho. To my amazement, he seemed interested. The impossible was edging into the plausible.

The next day Arum brought in Ali’s management: Herbert Muhammad and a number of Black Muslim advisers. Of course, they had never heard of Bophuthatswana either. I painted the rosiest picture I could: a black-run country, governed by black leaders, liberated from white South Africa. All technically true, though hardly the full story. To them, Ali fighting in Africa was symbolic. The money helped, of course. That evening, fate intervened. Diana and I, with Gregory and friends, headed to Studio 54, the nightclub of the moment.

As our limo pulled up, Muhammad Ali himself swept out. He mistook our car for his, opened the door, realised his error and laughed. For a moment, his charisma filled the street. Diana glowed. I called it a good omen.

The following day Arum told me Ali’s camp was satisfied. They believed Spinks, too, could be persuaded. His purse would be fatter for fighting Ali again than for obeying bureaucratic sanctioning bodies. The television networks, predictably, were keen. All that remained was official sanction. The WBA relented while the WBC dug in, but the WBA nod was enough.

Contracts were drawn up. Southern Sun would stage the Ali–Spinks rematch in Mmabatho. I signed at once. Arum, somewhat cannier, delayed. “I’ll announce it now. If no storm breaks, I’ll sign tomorrow.”

That evening, the news broke. Anchormen mangled the name: “Ali–Spinks to fight in Boputate … Boffutat … Bop – oh, shucks, you go to Johannesburg and turn right.” For a moment, the world chuckled. The focus was on the rematch, the WBA–WBC split and the snubbing of Ken Norton. Nobody mentioned apartheid for 24 hours. Arum signed.

Then, just as I began to relax, the protests began. The ANC in exile mobilised. Anti-apartheid activists excoriated Ali and Spinks as stooges of the Pretoria regime. Budweiser threatened to pull its sponsorship. Broadcasters panicked. For a surreal week, I was infamous in American boxing circles, referred to as “the man who had sold Bop to Ali”.

Looking back, the political storm was inevitable. The homelands were the cornerstone of apartheid’s survival plan: strip black South Africans of citizenship, parcel them into “independent” Bantustans and preserve white rule. To stage a global spectacle in Mmabatho was to lend legitimacy to Mangope’s fiction of sovereignty.

Ali’s advisers hadn’t understood this. To them, Bop sounded like another African republic, led by a black president and eager to host the world champion. But to the ANC and its allies abroad, it was collaboration with apartheid’s cruellest sleight of hand. This, of course, was not acceptable to those who had bought advertising space on the upcoming telecast. Upon learning that they were about to lend support to a dodgy South African “homeland”, they promptly withdrew, leaving the television company high and dry. Arum was informed that his deal with them was off.

• Extract from Escaping the Sun: My Life Beyond Sol Kerzner by Peter Venison and Melinda Ferguson, published by Melinda Ferguson Books