With public schools re-opening this week for the 2021 academic year, highly qualified lawyer and former two-weight world boxing champion Lovemore Ndou has spoken strongly about the importance of education, which Nelson Mandela said was the most powerful weapon one can use to change the world.
A practising lawyer and a boxing fanatic, Mandela said education helps people become better citizens. Ndou, 49, is a retired boxer with seven university degrees. He owns a law firm in Rockdale, Sydney, in Australia where he has lived since 1995. The former IBF junior welterweight, IBO and WBF welterweight champion had to go into self-exile to achieve his academic qualifications.
Born is Musina, Ndou had it difficult here – like any other black child growing under apartheid – and that includes being locked up in jail after being accused of having a love affair with a white girl. He was so badly brutalised by police that he thought his boxing career would not take off.
Nicknamed the “Black Panther” – after the US revolutionary organisation with an ideology of black nationalism, socialism, and armed self-defence, particularly against police brutality – Ndou told Sowetan from his home in Sydney that the feeling of accumulating university degrees was incomparable.
He was reacting to a question about how he felt on February 12 2007 when the IBF upgraded his status to being a fully-fledged champion. That came after Ricky Hatton was stripped of his title after refusing to defend against Ndou, who had fought and won the IBF elimination bout – the Australian fight of the year – against Naoufel Ben Rah in Sydney on February 4 2007.
“The feeling was inexplicable,” he said. “It was the best feeling to see the dream which had fermented back in the ramshackle gym at the copper mine in Musina finally crystalise. But make no mistake, it does not beat the feeling of graduating with a law degree.
“I am often asked what has been my biggest achievement: winning world titles or accumulating the university degrees which gave me a second career in the legal sphere. My response is unequivocally the latter. Success in the ring gives you status and theoretically a certain degree of wealth but one day you are going to be a former world champion, usurped by somebody younger and hungrier.”
He added: “Should you choose to ignore the corrosion of the clock and linger like an unpleasant odour you risk becoming a figure of ridicule, or even pity as you lurch towards retirement.
“Boxing might ultimately strip you of your dignity but education on the other hand can’t be taken away from you. The degrees you work so hard for are yours in perpetuity. With my education and study, you cannot take that knowledge away from me. I have that for life.”
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