Veteran karateka lives to pass on the legacy



As possibly one of the youngest karateka ever to achieve an 8th Dan qualification in the martial art, Port Elizabeth’s Chris Mance hopes to pass on his knowledge to the next generation of karateka in the city.
Mance, 63, recently graded and passed the 8th Dan with the World Traditional Karatedo Federation, having participated in a week-long training camp in Stara Wies, a martial arts village in Poland.
During the camp, Mance said, they were engaged in karate from 6am to 9pm daily.
Once that was completed, high level Dan examinations were conducted by a panel of four federation masters from Peru, the United States, Poland and Spain.
Mance’s career as a karateka started in his teenage years, while living in Kimberley.
He travelled to the US aged 24 to broaden his knowledge in the art.
He spent almost four years in the States, training in New York, before later moving to Los Angeles to realise a lifelong dream of training with Master Hidetaka Nishiyama, 9th Dan, who formed the traditional Karate-do Federation worldwide.
“This was a lifelong dream for me, to train with Master Nishiyama and then grade with his long-time disciples continuing his tradition.
“In 2007 we trained for a week with Master Nishiyama, just a few months before he died,” he said.
“We as his students are carrying on his legacy. He was a great humanitarian, gentleman and a master. It was a privilege to train with him and to grade with some of his most senior pupils.”
Having been involved in the martial arts discipline for the better part of four decades, Mance has been teaching karate and serving the Port Elizabeth community since 1983 at different venues.
In 1988, the Mance Karate Centre was built in Mount Pleasant and has been teaching there professionally since then.
“People see karate as very brutal. It’s like fighting and a sport, but we see it as an art form that can develop a human being and improve people,” Mance said.
He competed until he was 36 and has travelled to various competitions provincially, nationally and internationally during this time.
The Mance Karate Centre also sponsors the Walmer Community Development Karate Programme, where children go to learn the discipline through “traditional educational Karatedo (empty hand way).”
Mance’s wife Alta, 60, is a 5th Dan qualified karateka and member of the federation, and also very involved in the art.
She is armed with a passion of her own for teaching and Mance says the two of them “live, eat and sleep karate”.
“My wife is a genius with the kids. She has such fantastic results in teaching the children.
“Some of them are going through a very hard time. There is so much pressure on them to achieve, and to deal with it you need to have a strong character, discipline and effort and all that goes with it.”
Mance said one of the instructors who conducts the sessions at the hall is Sensei Nkosinathi Ngxangane, whom he has known since he was a teenager.
In addition to Ngxangane, Mandla Tuso was also taught by Mance and now teaches the children during these sessions.
“Those are the values we are focusing on, especially in the previously disadvantaged communities. Through their karate training they have become successful in life because it helped with their discipline and to achieve goals,” Mance said.
These training sessions are offered at the Walmer Community Hall and are carried out four times a week, for one hour.
“I had to make a living from karate, so I had to charge, but one of my goals was to have a club where people could come and just enjoy the art,” he said.
These come at no cost to the children and look to instill in them the five maxims on which their system is built. These maxims are character, etiquette, effort, sincerity and self-control.
These five maxims have been translated from Japanese into English and into Xhosa, so the community understands the principles they are being taught, he said

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