Not a warm welcome from all

Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, aka the Baddest Man on the Planet, is no role model, in or out of the ring.

The uncontrollable rage that drew Tyson from the streets into the ring also proved to be his undoing several times throughout his boxing career, as he succumbed to his aggressive impulses and substance abuse.

Had Tyson’s been the story of a backstreet thug who found salvation through discipline and sportsmanship, one would understand him being touted as a role model. But it seems the tempestuous youngster never left the man.

In 1992, after his divorce from actress Robin Givens ended a marriage she described as ‘pure hell”, he was convicted of raping beauty contestant Desiree Washington in a hotel room in Indiana. He served three years of a six-year sentence and was released in 1995, claiming to have converted to Islam while in prison. But the moment for which he will perhaps best be remembered was when he bit Evander Holyfield on both ears during a bout in 1997.

In 1999 he served nine months for assaulting two motorists after a traffic accident. Last year he served one day of a one-year sentence for drug possession and driving under the influence because he had checked himself into a rehabilitation centre for treatment for ‘various addictions”.

South African gender activists have been a little perturbed by his visits. Bafana Khumalo of the Sonke Gender Justice Network says that many men’s group are concerned about Tyson’s much-lauded visit. ‘He should not be the kind of person strutted around as a role model,” he said. ‘I’m concerned that they’re taking him to schools and all that. There are plenty of role models right here who are doing great work in their communities.”

They have also been dismayed by media praise for Tyson’s charitable endeavours. ‘This man is a rapist, a drunken driver, drug abuser and woman abuser,” said Fiona Nicholson of the Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme. ‘Has he grown a halo since then?”

Zohra Dawood of the Open Society Foundation said South Africans ‘can’t afford to be equivocal about violence against women”, adding that if Tyson was ‘the best we can do in terms of presenting role models, we’re in more trouble than we thought.”