As Zambia joins the rest of the world in observing 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, Phoenix News spoke to Leonard Masaiti, boxing icon who was deported from Italy where he had been plying his career for wife battering.

The 81 year old Masaiti popularly known as “Ked Miller” has turned into destitution, after his deportation in 1987.

Born on 11th September 1938 in Mbwili village, Samfya district in Luapula’s Chief Mwewa area, Mr. Masaiti spent part of his life on the Copperbelt before relocating to Lusaka.

He worked at Nchanga Mine in Chingola while engaging in amateur boxing before Scottish man Thom Miller adopted him and secured him a professional boxing license while at the same time he worked as a sports organizer at the Lusaka City Council.

Thom Miller then named Masaiti Ked Miller and linked him to Millan in Italy where he was engaged to train budding boxers in 1977. While in Italy ked miller also worked in Spain before returning to Italy.

According to miller, he married a very educated Italian woman who he had two children with.

Miller agrees he was beating his wife causing her birth complications as she struggled to give birth to their two children. He says he was doing it as a way of controlling his wife.

He however blames his downfall in Italy partly to racism.
After his stint in Italy ked miller’s life has not been good.
According to people that know him well, he had bought houses in Lusaka’s Libala Township but now he has nothing as he roams the streets begging where to sleep and what to eat. Abandoned by family and society. He has simply become a destitute.

When asked where he lives, miller reluctantly points at the chilenje community hall where he has been squatting in the toilet for the last few months.

At the time of this interview, which was late in the evening, he walked towards the community hall only to find it closed. He walked away hopelessly hoping to see another day as the 81 year old man has been reduced to a destitute with no food, shelter and family.

His first born son Luka recently came from Millan in Italy to look for him, but he was not impressed with what he found and vowed never to come back.

PHOENIX NEWS