18 Mar 2015

South African Amateur Fencing Association (SAAFA) president, Novak Perovic has described the state of African fencing as unimpressive.

Perovic, who was in Botswana last week, said the whole of Africa was in a bad state, noting however, that something was being done to build African fencing to a better standard.

He said they would train eight local fencers to positions of basic coaches and appoint two South African coaches to train Botswana Amateur Fencing Federation (BAFF) athletes. Fencing is a martial art of fighting with blades. The most common version of fencing today is called Olympic fencing, and is divided into three weapon categories: The foil, saber in the United States and épée.

He said coaching clinics would be held by the BAFF in partnership with SAAFA so as to exchange ideas. To improve the state of fencing in Africa, including Botswana, Perovic, who holds a number of titles as a member of the executive committee member - Federationale Internationale E’nscrime, vice chairperson of the Conderationale African E’nscrime, is entrusted with implementing development programmes in the Southern Africa region.

Botswana fencing federation president, Gaolatwe Mudongo said his association has a youth development programme that targets cadets and junior athletes. He said for every four private schools that the programme was introduced to, one public school was adopted into the programme with all training expenses covered by the association.

Mudongo said this was an effort to bring the sport to all Batswana, including those who could not afford the costs of the sport. Furthermore, he said the challenge they were facing was the geographical distribution, stating that they were only able to recruit players in and around Gaborone.

Despite the challenges, Mudongo said things were going to be better given their impending affiliation to the Botswana National Sports Council. He said the BNSC would help them regarding matters relating to funding, transport, accommodation and other related welfare needs by players.

Perovic was accompanied by Tony Rademeyer, the president of the Gauteng Fencing Association, who commended the Botswana fencing association for the progress they made.

He said BAFF has covered a lot of ground in trying to improve the appearance of fencing. He said the Gauteng provisional fencing association would help the Botswana side with their Gaborone Open tournament by sending volunteers to assist with the upcoming event. He also said they would send a coach based in Soweto to come on weekends to help with advancing players in Botswana to gain some aspect of the game. ENDS