The War For The Future

Young champions get a second chance in an exciting programme

- Kieran Rennie

History reminds us of where we’ve been. It can also, if we’re conscious, help guide us into a better future. The problem is we don’t seem to be learning from our previous generations’ mistakes.

As I walked around the grounds of the South African National Museum of Military History in Johannesburg with the young men of Growing Champions  (GC), I wondered why our species seems to be at its most creative and most efficient when we’re trying to kill each other.

As I tried, clumsily, to answer the GC boys’ questions about the hardware and the history on display, I reflected, with much dismay, at how easily the ‘unsightly sections’ of today’s (and yesterday’s) South Africa are reduced to mere column inches in a publication or carefully timed minutes, squeezed  between profit-making airtime on radio and TV. I wonder now if these young men and women, from the Eldorado Park area, will simply fall through the cracks as so many at-risk young South Africans have done before them – deemed too far gone, too tainted or too tiresome.

When GC founder  Sam Toweel Moore is asked to describe her organisation, she tells you that Growing Champions is an NPO in the business of changing lives. The daughter of recently deceased boxing legend Willie Toweel, Sam is not happy with only providing a safe haven for these youngsters. She’s also determined to arm them with the tools necessary to return to  the war zone and effect change from within.