South African Boxes His Way Into History

History came to the Olympic Games, standing 4 feet 9 inches and wearing green and gold satin shorts. It shadow-boxed through a tunnel and into the bright lights of Joventut Pavilion Sunday, wearing a too-big uniform and a blinking smile.

As Spanish boxer Rafael Lozano and South African flyweight Abram Khehla Fana Rhwala touched gloves in the middle of the ring at 2:04 in the afternoon, an awful chapter in South Africa’s past had ended.

Rhwala, a bandy-legged, 106-pound clerk from the township of Soweto, became the first black South African ever to compete in the Olympic Games.

The last time South Africa competed in the Olympics in 1960, a small team flew in a tiny propeller plane that hopscotched its way to Rome.

The photograph of the team--all white and all male--kneeling proudly in front of the silver plane, has hung for 32 years in the entrance hall of the former South African Olympic Committee.

The building still exists, the SAOC does not.

South African sport, imprisoned for more than a generation by the apartheid policies of its government, was set free last year when a new, non-racial National Olympic Committee of South Africa was recognized.

It was fitting then, that Nelson Mandela, president of the African National Congress, who was imprisoned for 26 years by the South African government and set free two years ago by a government of a different mind, was watching Rhwala’s fight from a seat high in the balcony.

Mandela’s presence here has been a beacon to his country’s athletes. He greeted them and waded through throngs of people at the athlete’s village.

At Saturday night’s opening ceremony, Mandela smiled broadly as the first-ever racially mixed South African Olympic team joined the family of sporting nations. And Sunday, on the first day of competition, Mandela went from venue to venue to lend his moral support to each newly minted South African Olympian.

Mandela, a fair welterweight boxer in his youth, pronounced himself pleased with Rhwala’s performance, even though the 22-year-old lost, 9-0.

“I don’t think he used his right hand as much as he should,” Mandela said, with a laugh.

“Our own people have been out of international sport for a long time. The (important) thing is that they are here. Next time, in Atlanta (site of the 1996 Summer Olympics), we hope to do better.”

Mandela, like most South Africans, is a keen sports fan. Doctors attribute his good health throughout his imprisonment and many hunger strikes to Mandela’s adherence to an exercise regimen, no matter how tiny his cell.

Clive Noble, the South African team doctor, marveled at Rhwala and Mandela and what it all meant.

“It’s incredible that we are here, it’s wonderful,” Noble said Sunday, over the din in the boxing arena. “This will do so much for us. Boxing is the No. 2 sport for blacks, behind football (American soccer). We are here to learn and we have a lot of that to do.”

Noble, an orthopedic surgeon, said he operated on Mandela’s estranged wife, Winnie, while Mandela was in prison. Noble grew more and more curious when, over the weeks of her medical treatment, Winnie peppered him with questions about the state of amateur boxing in South Africa.

“She asked me well-informed questions. She’d say, ‘What do you think of Boxer X?’ ” Noble said. “Finally I asked her, ‘Winnie, when did you become so interested in boxing?’ She said, ‘Oh, it’s not for me. Nelson wants to know.’ She was passing the information to him in prison.”

Mandela had already served six months of his life sentence when the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo began, without a South African team. The South African Olympic Committee had been instructed by the International Olympic Committee to send an integrated team. The SAOC responded by holding separate trials for nonwhites and offering to send a nonwhite team to Tokyo; but with the proviso that this other team would be separate and its athletes not allowed to wear the national uniform or march under the South African flag.

Since blacks were not citizens, the government explained to the IOC, how could they wear our colors?

South Africa’s invitation to the 1964 Olympic Games was revoked, and they were not invited again until this year.

Here the South Africans have sent a team of 95 athletes. Among them are eight blacks, and the smallest and youngest among these is Rhwala.

Rhwala’s debut came against a Spanish boxer, who naturally held the crowd’s support. The South African fought gamely and showed defensive skills in avoiding the aggressive attack of the Spaniard, but he struck too few of his own blows.

Afterward, Rhwala was disappointed but not sad. He said he was proud that Mandela had been there to see him and that he was proud that South Africa was there at all.

Sitting beside him was South Africa’s only other boxer, Giovanni Pretorius. Pretorius, who is white, had been in Rhwala’s corner during the fight and the two are roommates at the athlete’s village.

The friendship of an Afrikaner firefighter and a black clerk is the hoped-for benefit South Africa wants to take away from these Games.

“It was a great honor to be in the corner for my teammate and my friend,” Pretorius said.

The young boxer said he had spoken to his family, which had stayed up the night before to watch the opening ceremony. Never before had South African television been allowed to purchase the rights to televise the Olympics, and reports are that the nation is enchanted with this new and welcome spectacle.

“My mother said she saw me marching in the ceremony,” Pretorius said. “She was crying.”

South Africa’s other boxer had a similar idea. Rhwala suddenly left the seating area.

History called home to talk to his mother.