Olwethu Mbanjane Turns gsport Awards Experience Into a Rising Career in Sports Media

Born in Gauteng and a Bachelor of Arts Honours graduate in Media Studies from Wits University, Mbanjane is among the rising contenders who cut their teeth on the gsport Awards and turned that experience into real ground in a crowded industry. She is honest about where she stands.

“I’d say ‘Rising’. I think that’s true, because I haven’t fully found my feet in the industry.”

Wits Media Graduate and 2025 gsport Awards Assistant, Olwethu Mbanjane

For Mbanjane, range is the point. She would rather be the person who can step into several roles than one boxed into a single speciality, someone, in her words, “actually willing to do different things.” It is a deliberate mindset. She wants to be the name a producer calls to manage a project one week and run the floor the next, rather than a specialist waiting for one kind of brief.

Before the Awards, her biggest break had been volunteering as a media officer at the Toyota Cup, a pre-season tournament run in collaboration with KZ Achievers, in 2024. 

Her route to the 2025 gsport Awards then came through a call for volunteers, which reached her while she was working in sports management and branding. On the night, her brief was to create content, moving winners from the main stage to the interview room and capturing material for gsport’s website and social platforms.

The work taught her things a lecture hall could not. “It actually gave me practical work,” she says. “I have to think on the spot and I have to be creative.” She learned, as she puts it, to manoeuvre around a space that is genuinely busy, and to keep producing under pressure. 

Just as valuable was the network she built and the mentors she still leans on, the kind of grounding her supervisors had always told her would matter as much as the qualification itself.

She also walked away with sharper tools. Working mostly from her phone, Mbanjane upskilled her photography and, perhaps more importantly, found her confidence, learning to hold her ground in a busy professional space rather than shrink from it, and to make her work look the part so that no one would write her off as the new arrival.

That instinct to back women runs through her academic work too. Her Honours research explored the challenges women in sports media face compared to their male counterparts, from double standards to the stereotypes that shape how their work is judged. It is a subject she has lived as much as studied, and one that clearly informs the kind of professional she wants to become.

Mbanjane is clear about where she is heading. She wants to work behind the scenes, but with a profile that carries weight. “I want to be the Kass Naidoo and I want to be the Carol Tshabalala,” she says, naming two women whose names move rooms in South African sport. 

The ambition, though, is bigger than her own byline. “I want my name to speak for itself,” she says, and then to do more than that, to “pave the way for people, probably girls who want to be in sports media, sports management, sports production,” and to open doors they had thought were closed to them. She pictures young women one day using her name to walk into the conferences and rooms that once felt out of reach.

“Sometimes I tend to question myself and be like, is this where I really want to be?” 

The climb has not been free of doubt. Mbanjane admits to the familiar self-doubt that visits many young women trying to establish themselves, sharpened by the practical pressures of starting out. Her response has been to keep moving and to trust the first door that opens. Start where you can, she says, and let the work and the relationships speak for you.

Her advice to the young women watching is refreshingly direct. “I’d say bold steps,” she says. Send the message, ask the practical question, and lean on the platforms now opening up, among them initiatives such as Basadi in Action, which are creating hands-on pathways into sport for women who might otherwise struggle to get started.

Now interning with sports public relations firm Big Match Temperament Specialists, and naming netball, football and cricket as the codes she would most like to work in, Mbanjane is exactly the kind of emerging talent gsport set out to surface and support. She is still learning, still building, and determined to make the path look possible for the next young woman who dares to picture herself in the room.

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Main Photo Caption: Olwethu Mbanjane, a Media Studies Honours graduate from Wits University, gained early experience on the gsport Awards before stepping into sports public relations. All Photos: Supplied

Photo 2 Caption: Mbanjane credits versatility, strong networks, and bold steps for the ground she has made as a young woman in the industry.

Photo 3 Caption: Now an intern at a PR firm, Olwethu Mbanjane hopes her name will open doors for the next generation of women.