WORLD’S DEADLIEST SELF-DEFENSE ART?
While the Philippines is one of the most dangerous nations in the world, South Africa has slightly more than half the population but eight times the murder rate and 10 times the violent crime, according to CountryEconomy.com. And Cape Town, South Africa, population 4 million, is one of the most dangerous cities in the world. It has approximately 100 gangs and averages 50 murders a day. No part of Cape Town is more dangerous than the Cape Flats ghettos created in the 1950s by the apartheid regime. This is the neighborhood where Lloyd De Jongh grew up.
De Jongh was so poor that a $10 college admission fee was beyond his family’s means. It was in Cape Flats where he was mugged multiple times and saw his brother nearly stabbed to death on the street. Before moving to Dubai, he worked in executive and diplomatic protection. In Dubai, he worked in electronic security, then national defense and critical infrastructure protection. He now lives in Warsaw, Poland, where he’s sought out by high-level martial artists and law-enforcement operators for his expertise in the Piper Knife Fighting System. Why is he in demand? In his own words: “Piper brings an entirely new dimension to the blade arts. Everyone has explored the Asian and Filipino systems, but very few have presented any authentic African systems.”
Origins of Piper
De Jongh’s martial studies began at age 16 with karate. They continued when he switched to Ed Parker’s four years later. During his kenpo phase, he met Nigel February, founder of Piper, and received a brief introduction to the system. But life went on, and De Jongh continued in karate, then to better deal with the unruly clients he encountered during the decade he worked as a nightclub bouncer. He also trained privately in Brazilian under Erik Petermann.
