An aspiring young boxer from Langa has made an emotional appeal to the public to assist her by sponsoring or donating proper boxing gear..
Emihle Ntunja, 25, is passionate about boxing but does not have proper gear to train with or use when she’s booked for a fight.
Ms Ntunja said when she has a fight, she has to borrow the kit she needs, among which are gloves and boxing shorts.
She has a big match on Saturday February 19 and she is appealing for assistance.
Ms Ntunja said she started boxing in 2016 when she was 19 years old. After just four days of training, she was booked to fight – and won.
It was then that she began to fall in love with the sport and started dreaming big.
However, she said, unwanted sexual advances from her coach, forced her to leave the gym she was training at – and then she also started using drugs.
“I left that gym because it was no longer serving its purpose to me. I therefore relocated to Kraainfontein and joined another boxing gym around 2017.
“Out frustration I lost a sense of direction in life and found myself smoking dagga and being friends with the wrong people. From 2019 to 2020 I was not active in boxing and I was just smoking dagga,” she said.
She said her parents, who live in the Eastern Cape are pensioners and she doesn’t have a good relationship with her sister. So, she’s all on her own.
In 2021, she said, she decided to rewrite her matric – and passed. Determined to prove herself in the ring, she borrowed R300 from a loan shark to register with the boxing federation.
Ms Ntunja, who hopes to win her fight in order to pay back the loan, said she dreams of becoming the first female boxer in the province to win a title.
If you’d like to help Ms Ntunja, you can contact her at 078 914 9146.