BBC- Police in South Africa are on the lookout for thieves of a boxing belt that US champion Sugar Ray Leonard gave to Nelson Mandela. The $3,000 (£2,500) world champion belt had been on display at the Mandela House museum in Soweto. According to Col. Dimakatso Sello, a police spokesperson, a theft case was reported…
BBC- Police in South Africa are on the lookout for thieves of a boxing belt that US champion Sugar Ray Leonard gave to Nelson Mandela.
The $3,000 (£2,500) world champion belt had been on display at the Mandela House museum in Soweto.
According to Col. Dimakatso Sello, a police spokesperson, a theft case was reported to the police on July 2.
Staff members who arrived for work at the renowned museum on Vilakazi Street, where the anti-apartheid icon resided from 1946 to 1962, reportedly discovered that the locks had been changed the day before.
It was discovered after an investigation that the belt had been stolen. At this time, it is unknown if anything else was taken.
Mandela was a devotee of boxing and served 27 years in prison for his opposition to apartheid before being elected as South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994.
“I preferred the science of boxing over the physical violence. In his memoirs, he stated, “I was fascinated by how one moved one’s body to protect oneself, how one employed a plan to both attack and retreat, and how one paced oneself over a match.
The belt was delivered to Mandela by the white-minority government of South Africa in February 1990, according to Mandela House, shortly after his release from jail.
