| Biography | Ronnie van der Walt (born c1935, Cape Town, South Africa - August 2012, Jamaica) was a South African-born welterweight boxer.
He is perhaps best known for being a victim of South African race classification laws, when in 1967 he was classified as a coloured person in terms of the Population Registration Amendment Act. But Van der Walt had been a pupil at a whites only school and had always fought as a white. The same letter was sent to the Cape Boxing Control Board and because mixed sport was illegal in South Africa at the time, Van der Walt was withdrawn from a tournament to be held at the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town. He appealed to the Race Classification Board and set out to prove that he was of European descent. But he soon realised that an investigation would reveal his wifes coloured ancestry and that they could be charged with contravening the Immorality Act. He then took his family to Britain and never returned to South Africa. He moved to Jamaica after spending many years in the UK. |