Mamelodi Sundowns had Natasha Tsichlas. Ria Stars had Ria Ledwaba. Golden Arrows have Mato Madlala. Now meet EC Bees team manager Zama Nene.
The four women might be from different backgrounds and eras but they have one thing in common – their love for the beautiful game.
Tsichlas, Ledwaba and Madlala have played and continue to play a crucial role in developing soccer as they held or hold powerful positions in the male-dominated sport.
The 30-year-old Nene has set herself a target of five years to be an administrator in the Premier Soccer League.
“Hopefully it will be with EC Bees,” she said.
The Clermont-born “mean cook”, as she describes herself, got into the sport by chance as her parents wanted her to be a land surveyor or a chef.
“I don't even know what the hell that is,” she jokingly said when talking about surveying.
“But I know it deals with land and all that stuff.”
Nene enrolled for hospitality and marketing studies but quickly got bored with both and dropped out.
It was when she was working at THG International, a Johannesburg-based corporate and sport hospitality company, that she got her big break in soccer.
She was supposed to drum up the 2010 Fifa World Cup to Thanda Royal CEO Pierre Delvaux but decided to take a chance and drummed herself up.
Instead of selling the company, she sold herself and asked to be Thanda Royal Zulu’s PRO and marketer.
Delvaux flew her to Durban for their home game to assess her. She impressed him and joined the team as its PRO in 2008, she recalled.
It was at Thanda that she met her now ex-husband James Madidilane, who was still playing at the time.
She married the former Bafana Bafana star, who has since taken up a coaching gig, in Lesotho in 2012.
Because of her commitment to her family, she stopped working to be a housewife when Madidilane joined Maritzburg United the same year.
But 2012 “became the dark days” when Madidilane lost his job, and the newly-weds lost their Bloemfontein house and cars.
They moved back home with Nene's mother to “hide out”.
She went back to work at a call centre. It was in 2013 that they mutually agreed to a divorce.
“I'm a career-driven woman. I've played my part in trying to be someone's wife, and unfortunately it was overwhelming for me so I'm trying to be career-driven now,” she said.
In 2014 Nene met Mthatha Bucks general manager Luxolo Matikinca, who at the time was still at Durban FC. She shadowed him and decided she wanted to go back to soccer.
When Matikinca joined Cape Town All Stars he told Nene that Blackburn Rovers were looking for a CEO/general manager.
She joined as its team manager but left after the team could not pay its staff for up to six months and took up a post with Transnet in Port Elizabeth.
She joined Bees in 2015 and has not looked back.
So what has her journey been like in such a male-dominated world?
Players and officials alike hit on her all the time, she said.
“Oh they try – not my players because they know I bite.
“Even officials try. They always say I put up this wall. Xhosas say ndibakrwada because I don't want to be an easy target for people to talk to.
“Dating a player is me disregarding my management,” she said.
Nene hopes to gain promotion to the National First Division with Bees and eventually to the PSL.
“If it wasn’t for this football thing I’d be at home cooking, looking after the partner and kids and just playing that role of being a mother,” she said.
Nene tried playing soccer but stopped because she noticed it was changing her.
“I started doing crazy stuff putting my hand in my pants. Started to bounce around and I was like the last time I checked I was a woman. That’s when I stopped because I was adopting habits . . . I noticed that this is not me. I’m a woman. I enjoy being a woman.”
New kid on Bees block eyes PSL job
The four women might be from different backgrounds and eras but they have one thing in common – their love for the beautiful game.
Tsichlas, Ledwaba and Madlala have played and continue to play a crucial role in developing soccer as they held or hold powerful positions in the male-dominated sport.
The 30-year-old Nene has set herself a target of five years to be an administrator in the Premier Soccer League.
“Hopefully it will be with EC Bees,” she said.
The Clermont-born “mean cook”, as she describes herself, got into the sport by chance as her parents wanted her to be a land surveyor or a chef.
“I don't even know what the hell that is,” she jokingly said when talking about surveying.
“But I know it deals with land and all that stuff.”
Nene enrolled for hospitality and marketing studies but quickly got bored with both and dropped out.
It was when she was working at THG International, a Johannesburg-based corporate and sport hospitality company, that she got her big break in soccer.
She was supposed to drum up the 2010 Fifa World Cup to Thanda Royal CEO Pierre Delvaux but decided to take a chance and drummed herself up.
Instead of selling the company, she sold herself and asked to be Thanda Royal Zulu’s PRO and marketer.
Delvaux flew her to Durban for their home game to assess her. She impressed him and joined the team as its PRO in 2008, she recalled.
It was at Thanda that she met her now ex-husband James Madidilane, who was still playing at the time.
She married the former Bafana Bafana star, who has since taken up a coaching gig, in Lesotho in 2012.
Because of her commitment to her family, she stopped working to be a housewife when Madidilane joined Maritzburg United the same year.
But 2012 “became the dark days” when Madidilane lost his job, and the newly-weds lost their Bloemfontein house and cars.
They moved back home with Nene's mother to “hide out”.
She went back to work at a call centre. It was in 2013 that they mutually agreed to a divorce.
“I'm a career-driven woman. I've played my part in trying to be someone's wife, and unfortunately it was overwhelming for me so I'm trying to be career-driven now,” she said.
In 2014 Nene met Mthatha Bucks general manager Luxolo Matikinca, who at the time was still at Durban FC. She shadowed him and decided she wanted to go back to soccer.
When Matikinca joined Cape Town All Stars he told Nene that Blackburn Rovers were looking for a CEO/general manager.
She joined as its team manager but left after the team could not pay its staff for up to six months and took up a post with Transnet in Port Elizabeth.
She joined Bees in 2015 and has not looked back.
So what has her journey been like in such a male-dominated world?
Players and officials alike hit on her all the time, she said.
“Oh they try – not my players because they know I bite.
“Even officials try. They always say I put up this wall. Xhosas say ndibakrwada because I don't want to be an easy target for people to talk to.
“Dating a player is me disregarding my management,” she said.
Nene hopes to gain promotion to the National First Division with Bees and eventually to the PSL.
“If it wasn’t for this football thing I’d be at home cooking, looking after the partner and kids and just playing that role of being a mother,” she said.
Nene tried playing soccer but stopped because she noticed it was changing her.
“I started doing crazy stuff putting my hand in my pants. Started to bounce around and I was like the last time I checked I was a woman. That’s when I stopped because I was adopting habits . . . I noticed that this is not me. I’m a woman. I enjoy being a woman.”
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