Interim boxing board to address outdated act 

Newly-appointed interim Namibia Professional Boxing and Wrestling Control Board (NPBWCB) chairperson Armas Shivute says the board’s primary objective is to amend the outdated Boxing Act of 1980.

Shivute heads a five-member board which also includes his deputy, boxing promoter Anita Tjombe, Dr Naftal Kandiuapa, Natanael Kurtz, Patrick Esterhuizeni and lawyer Ronald Kurtz, who returns for a second stint on the board after serving from 2016 to 2019.

The board has three months to deliver on the mandate assigned to them by minister of education, innovation, youth, sport, arts and culture Sanet Steenkamp on Tuesday.

Shivute said he accepted the responsibility as he wishes to contribute meaningfully to boxing and wrestling.

“My involvement with boxing has come a long way and as a result it motivated the appointing authority to realise I perhaps deserve to be in this position, together with my four other colleagues, who are also deserving appointees,” he said.

“When you look at the appointment of that board, as per the requirement of the act there is a need to have a doctor and a lawyer to make sure we are always on the right legal footing,” Shivute said of their roles.

“And when you look at the rest of the members of the board, Anita Tjombe, not only because she is a woman, but has been involved in boxing for quite a while as a promoter and advocating for women’s involvement in boxing.”

Board vice chairperson Tjombe said: “I struggled from 2011 to have that fixed and implemented, but with no luck and success. The team that is currently heading the boxing board is very passionate about boxing. In a nutshell, we all are driven to make that difference.”

Tjombe believes once the act is amended and updated, wrestling and boxing will thrive.

“We will work very hard to make a difference, especially to have women boxers allowed to fight and also addressing a lot of other stuff that are neglected,” he said.

“That is one key area we are seriously going to look at: to make sure the act is amended to make provision for women boxers to be able to fight professionally.

“At the moment they can fight as amateurs, but the act doesn’t make provision for them to fight as professional boxers,” Tjombe said.

It is imperative that the country gets its regulatory framework up to date with global trends as this will unlock benefits currently out of Namibians’ reach.

“Things have changed so much. The rules of boxing have changed, and we are stuck with the act of 1980 governing our affairs,” Shivute said.

“We have different rules in Namibia, and the rest of the world got new rules. That only means we are not aligned, and we basically want to align ourselves with the rest of the world as far as boxing is concerned.”

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