Mozambican woman starts boxing for self-defence, reaches Olympics

• More than 54 Mozambican women face violence every day
• Female boxers are taking up the sport for self defence
• Alcinda Lucas Dos Santos competing at Olympics

MAPUTO – Mozambican boxer Alcinda Lucas Dos Santos first learned to use her fists to defend herself against school bullies and street violence - now she is using them in the boxing ring at the Paris Olympics.

In Mozambique, where at least 54 women face violence every day, according to the most recent United Nations data, boxing is about more than winning medals for many women fighters.

Dos Santos will face China's Yang Liu in the qualifying round of the women's 66kg category on Thursday.

Lurdes Mutola, who won a gold for Mozambique running the 800m at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, said Dos Santos was her country's best hope of a medal in Paris.

"I want the podium in Paris," Dos Santos said.

"When I started boxing, I was still a secondary school student, and my mother saw it as ... something that would keep me away from the streets," Dos Santos told Context at her gym in the Mozambican capital Maputo before travelling to Paris.

Dos Santos and her best friend Rady Gramane took up boxing in 2012, both motivated by concerns for their own personal safety. Then after three months at the boxing academy, Dos Santos and Gramane decided to try to become professionals.

"There is much to gain from sports," said Dos Santos. "There are lessons to learn, it is a lifestyle, you learn to respect others, to deal with people, and you get healthy."

Now, Dos Santos, 30, and Gramane, 28, are widely considered Mozambique's most successful boxers - women or men.

They both won medals at the 2022 Women's World Boxing Championship, the 2022 Commonwealth Games, the African Boxing Championship in 2022, and competed at the last Olympics in Tokyo.

Their sporting prowess and public appearances as sports personalities have helped increase the popularity of the sport, inspiring a new generation of women boxers. But even then, Dos Santos still faced opposition from her community. 

"(My neighbours) would see me on T.V. and they would say to me, 'You are going to break your face boxing ... find something else to do, boxing won't take you anywhere'," said Dos Santos.

A new generation inspired

The next generation of women in Mozambique still face the same gender-based violence, but many have been inspired by Dos Santos and Gramane to enter the ring. 

"Parents are bringing their daughters to join the gym at a very young age to protect themselves," said Carlos Custodio, a boxing coach in Maputo.

From just a handful of boxers a decade ago, now all four major clubs in the country have female professional teams, and a few dozen women are competing in national and regional tournaments.

"Initially, they joined for exercise and self-defence, but after seeing others succeed professionally they have become increasingly determined to pursue professional careers themselves," said Custodio.

Avidêndia Bila, 19, started training at the same gym with Dos Santos and Gramane in December last year after seeing them succeed in a national competition.

"It is really beautiful to see them in the boxing ring," Bila said.

A personal trainer by profession, Bila said she committed to the sport after realising "it is going to help me outside of the ring too ... Boxing can help us in our daily lives, to defend ourselves and others," she said. 

Despite her achievements, Dos Santos said a lack of financial support was a challenge for Mozambican boxers. Getting visas for international competitions could sometimes be harder than the training, Gramane added. 

"We don't have sponsorship to this day. Sometimes we have to plead to get the money we need to travel to competitions," said Dos Santos. 

In the end, Dos Santos pooled together funds from the National Olympic Committee, government sports departments and corporations to make it to Paris.

"Every competition is important to me, but my biggest ambition is to win a medal in the Olympics.I think every athlete has that ambition," she said. 

(Reporting by Tavares Cebola in Maputo. Editing by Jonathan Hemming)