National boxing champion Bongani Mahlangu moonlights as a small-time entrepreneur who’s looking to turn his South African junior-featherweight title into a family business.
At 43, the father of three who defended the belt with a devastating knockout last weekend has no intention of surrendering it any time soon.
“This belt is going to take me to retirement — if I get to 50 years, then so be it,” Mahlangu said at the family home in the Vaal Triangle township of Boipatong this week.
That is the same homestead where the family survived the infamous massacre of June 1992, when an impi from a nearby hostel rampaged through the streets late at night, murdering 45 people.
Bongani and older sister Petunia were watching TV when they were startled by the sound of breaking glass. They switched off the lights and took refuge in a bedroom at the back of the house, burglar bars keeping their would-be assailants out.
Father Joshua woke up to the taunting shouts of the attackers. “Vula! Get Out! Come and fight,” he recounted, adding that Boipatong is a peaceful place these days.
After winning the amateur-based The Summit programme on TV in the early 2000s, he was supposed to move to Johannesburg full-time and turn professional. But a break-in at the Yeoville flat where he was staying with Petunia convinced him to retreat to the Vaal.
He continued fighting in amateur ranks and made the national team for the 2004 Olympics and the 2006 Commonwealth Games, before finally turning professional; 17 years later he remains at the top. “My target is to reach 50 years,” he vowed.
Joshua, who got the Mahlangus into boxing in the first place, chuckled: “He wants to do a George Foreman.”
Foreman and Bernard Hopkins, Bongani emphasised. Former heavyweight champion Foreman fought into his late 40s and middleweight king Hopkins had his final bout at the age of 51 (both lost).
“I’m watching my boy,” said the titleholder, referring to novice son Bheki Maitse, who fought on the same bill in Johannesburg last weekend.
He wants to do a George Foreman
— Joshua Mahlangu, father of SA junior-featherweight champ Bongani
They weren’t the first local father and son to box in the same tournament — Johannes and Ishmael Mtshali did it in Durban in 2003 and Fransie and Marcel Botha repeated it in Auckland, New Zealand, a decade later — but the Mahlangus were the first to notch up a couple of victories.
“I want him to take over my belt when I quit one day.”
Boxing is already a family business in the Mahlangu household, comprising three generations. Brother Sandile is the professional coach.
Joshua fought sporadically from 1977 to 1981, quitting after losing on points to future world title contender Simon Skhosana.
Joshua, a flyweight, had taken the fight against the rising bantamweight star as a late substitute. “You could sit a year, two years with no fight,” recalled Joshua, who packed it in and later decided to train amateurs. “It’s now better than it was for us,” he added.
But Bongani, who became a grandfather last year courtesy of Bheki, has also had to endure periods of inactivity since turning professional in 2006.
He too had to take fights a few divisions above his limit to make ends meet, but he has twice lifted the SA junior-featherweight belt, his latest reign starting last year when he knocked out Ayabonga Sonjica with his heavy southpaw left.
The lack of fights and failure to secure a dedicated promoter made Mahlangu realise he needed to make money from other endeavours.
Instead of buying a flashy car he bought a long-base bakkie which he uses for a transport business. Mahlangu, who was retrenched as a forklift operator from a nearby factory a couple of years ago, buys and sells wooden pallets and also gives boxercise classes at the gym he started down the road.
It’s the same gym where Joshua still coaches about 30 amateurs. “My children go to school in town, in Vanderbijlpark, and I don’t want to be the father who pulls his kids out of school to take them back to the location because I wasted my money,” said Bongani.
“Boxing helps me get ahead on the school fees.”
The biggest purse of his 34-fight career was R160,000, he said. “It’s a tough sport. There are promoters who promise you one thing, then when they send the contract the money is less and they’ll tell you they’ve got no sponsors, they’re paying out of their own pocket.”
Boxing can be quiet for fighters who don’t have dedicated promoters, almost as quiet as Boipatong is these days. But Bongani, who has made his own mark on the sport, doesn’t always mind. “I like the peace,” he sighed.
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