25 Feb 2015

Although Botswana Karate Association (BOKA) has a crop of credible female karatekas; the association seems to be doing less in developing female officials. 

This became evident during the association’s national team selection competition where all the bouts were officiated by men. 

Few women were involved mostly in logistics of the day.

BOKA programmes coordinator, Mpho Bakwadi admitted that lack of female officials has been a concern to the association and said when they had federation courses; clubs did not submit women’s names. 

“By now we should be having female referees and judges as women have been involved in karate for such a long time,” he said.

Last year, Bakwadi said they had hoped to spur women’s involvement in such position, but that never saw the light of the day as the association had a lot of hiccups. 

“Last year, we did not have any tournament. But we have made it our call to establish why women seem to be sidelined in such positions, maybe there are social causes.”

 The coordinator said after the election of the new committee on March 28, they would give the issue priority to ensure that women were not disadvantaged.  

The association intends to improve the ratio, and said even if they had to hold females only courses, they would do that.  

On the issue of many mushrooming styles, Bakwadi said locally, there were only three styles, and the rest were just branches.

He said they had Shoturyu, Shotokan and Gojuryu, which were recognised by World Karate federation (WKF).  

He said internationally there were four styles, including Wadoryu which is not available locally. 

Presently, there were 10 federations in the country and under these 10, they were about 17 clubs. 

Accordingly, these 10 federations should be affiliated to an international body, and shockingly some were not affiliated to any. 

The official said the issue of people claiming styles was a concern to them, and said their constitution was vague as it states that for one to be ratified as a federation, they should have three clubs under them.  

Bakwadi said federations should be under one of the four WKF styles and confirmed that presently, there were some styles that did not have an international affiliation. 

“Can you believe that some of the clubs around are not our members?’ he asked rhetorically. Such things, he said were not about sportsmanship but money as members pay registration fees.

He said they had approached schools, to alert the officials about such culprits.

 He said it was not wrong for people to form clubs, but he added that it was disturbing if people decide to form new clubs because they could not resolve issues in their former clubs. “We support clubs financially and it becomes cumbersome if they were too many. We want to put this to a stop.” 

He said their constitution will curb such.

Other than that, the competition was a success as 15 clubs attended and the athletes gave their all to book places in the national team.

One of the exciting bouts was the ladies under-55kg kumite in which award winning Thato Malunga of SSG gave her teammate Baone Radiposo a tough time. 

Malunga won the bout by 2-0. 

She made her intentions known by causing Radiposo to seek medical assistance due to a bleeding nose. 

After being attended, it was evident that Malunga was taking it ease with her teammate to complete the bout with a low margin.

In the under-67 ladies, Merilynn Manthe of SSKB won by an impressive margin of 5-0 against Segametsi Chaloba of Kagiso club from Francistown.  L

In the over 61kg ladies bout, Kumite Tsholofelo Maduma of SSG narrowly escaped defeat by a seven all draw in her bout against Gaolathe Tjetjoo of Kagiso. 

Initially Tjetjoo had an upper hand and led by 4-1, realising that Maduma was on the losing end, her teammates side coached her until she eclipsed her opponent and the two finished with seven points each, but the referee declared her the victor. 

In over 68kg, ladies kumite Nshingi Mosalagae of Kagiso whitewashed her SSKB opponent Okopeng by 4-1.

Mosalagae sailed easily as her opponent seemed to lack aggression. 

Village karate club’s Tshegofatso Mangadi defeated her teammate, Sarafina Gabatshwane by 5-3 in ladies under 68kg kumite.

All the karatekas who participated on the day will go on to compete in Francistown to accumulate more points.  ENDS