Sekgapane never gets a mention when South African boxing greats are discussed but he belongs up there with Brian Mitchell, Jake Tuli, Willie Toweel and Dingaan Thobela because when he turned pro long, long ago in 1970, black and white fighters were kept well apart in his homeland (blacks and whites were kept well apart in every sport there) and by the time he retired in 1981 the barriers were down in boxing and Norman, a stocky, aggressive warrior of a fighter had lived through those changes more than any other fighter (although Nelson Mandela 'did a bit').
Sekgapane built his reputation in bruising 'non-white' battle royales in the early 1970s with the likes of Anthony Morodi, Nkosana Mgxaji, Evans Gwiji and Ben Lekalake, among many others, all of whom fought each other repeatedly in a vicious circle of intertia because there was nowhere else to go. Sekgapane was last man standing at lightweight, then he moved up and carved his way through the light-welters until he proved almost impossible to match.
This all changed in August 1973 when America's huge-punching Bob Foster made his way to Johannesburg to defend his world light-heavyweight title against Pierre Fourie, which marked the first time a black and a white fighter had met on South African soil and the meeting generated huge publicity. (Fourie addressed the champion “boy” and Foster held him up for 15 rounds to prolong his agony in front of a crowd of 37,000; more amusingly, Fourie said he had called him “Bob” in his thick South African accent.)
Within a year, Sekgapane topped the first mixed-race bill in South Africa, outlasting perennial Danish threat Jorgen Hansen in nine rounds and all of a sudden he was now building his reputation against white fighters - visiting white fighters for a time, such as Hansen, Everaldo Costa Azevedo of Italy and Argentina's brilliant Carlos Maria Giminez (who beat him), but by 1976 he was punching holes in white South Africans and climbing his way up the world rankings. In 1978 came the unthinkable: Sekgapane became the first black South African to challenge for a world boxing title and he did so in South Africa itself.
Sadly, he had the misfortune to challenge a brilliant, globetrotting, stone-faced Colombian by the name of Antonio Cervantes, who held the WBA light-welterweight title and who wore him down and stopped him in nine rounds in front of a disappointed crowd of 8,000. Sekgapane looked every one of his 30 years in the fight, a veteran now of 59 fights “It was the right thing,” he said, “at the wrong time.”
He clung on to boxing for a while, losing to men he had previously licked, but he finally walked away in 1981 when it was clear he had nothing more to offer. Nevertheless, Sekgapane paved the way for Peter “Terror” Mathebula, who did make it to a world title in 1980 in Los Angeles, to be followed down the line by such familiar names as “Baby” Jake Matlala and "Sugar Boy" Malinga.
It is something of a consolation that Sekgapane was able to witness all that.
