Boitumelo Matjila Finds Her Voice as the Pioneer Presenter of the 2026 Telkom Netball League

When Boitumelo Matjila arrived at university, sport was not on the plan. She had set out to study financial management, yet the acceptance that came through was for sport. She took it, and found the calling that would shape the rest of her story. 

“I always say sports actually chose me.”

Sports Presenter and Administrator, Boitumelo ‘BeeValtina’ Matjila

Affectionately known as BeeValtina, Matjila has built a career that runs from the athletics track to the microphone and into the engine room of how sport is organised. As a youngster she fell in love with running, drawn to the short sprints, and went on to compete in shot put and javelin while nursing a quiet wish that she had the legs for the long jump she loved. 

By the time she finished school, her fascination had shifted to what happens off the field, the administration, the planning and, above all, the storytelling. She believes “each and every athlete has a story to tell”, and built her studies in sport management around that conviction.

That grounding now runs deep. Matjila has coordinated student sport at the Tshwane University of Technology, served a sport administration and events internship at Wits University, and today works as an operations coordinator at University Sport South Africa. 

The operational know-how, she says, changed how she works in front of an audience, teaching her to plan meticulously and then adapt the moment a script meets real life.

It was that blend of athlete, administrator and storyteller that suited her to the role that defined her 2026. In her telling, the season marked the first time the Telkom Netball League had introduced an online presenter, a brief built entirely around the moments the main broadcast never reaches. 

Where the cameras follow the game and the changing rooms, Matjila chased the laughter, the dancing, the dressing-room challenges and the friendships that cut across rival teams. 

“Off the court, we are driven by the same cause. We want to grow the sport and create memories.” 

For her, the point was always to show the players as people. “They’re not just athletes, they are also human. They have families, they have careers.”

The schedule was relentless. The first power week, in Durban, ran for 15 days of back-to-back matches that began at 07h00 and stretched deep into the day. The second moved to Ellis Park Arena, and the third and final leg was hosted at Rembrandt Hall at the University of Pretoria, where the netball sold out the venue. With two teams from every province, Matjila set herself the task of finding a story in every player, not only the headline names.

One moment has stayed with her above all others. In the second division, a team lifted a title it had never won before, and the players sank to the floor in tears. One of the province’s two sides had not reached the final, and the winners turned the triumph outward. 

“This is not for us, but it’s for everybody who’s been supporting us in the Western Cape,” Matjila recalls them saying. For one player it was a fitting farewell. “I’ve earned my place and I can now move and allow other kids to come along,” she told Matjila, ready to retire from netball.

At the top of the standings, the Free State Crinums completed an unbeaten season to claim the first-division title. Matjila remembers the mandate that drove them, a clean sheet declared from the very first power week and a refusal to drop a single game carried all the way to the trophy. She watched the same intensity, and the same respect between players and coaches who had often been teammates, play out across the league.

The competition also reached beyond South Africa’s borders. Malawi joined the opening power week and Zimbabwe the second, while a Botswana international, the captain of her national side, featured too. Matjila interviewed the Zimbabwe Netball president, Leticia Chipandu, who told her the exposure was helping her team prepare for competition abroad. For Matjila, the presence of those sides signalled something larger, a chance to grow netball across the continent rather than within one country alone.

Development sat at the heart of the season. For the first time, the league took clinics into schools in each host city, putting learners on court with players they had only seen on television. “Imagine you’re a primary and high school, you get to be in a court with a TNL player who you only see on TV,” she says. Netball South Africa, she notes, deliberately wanted a fresh, young and unfamiliar face to front its digital coverage, and chose her.

She is clear-eyed about what the women’s game still needs. Sponsors such as Puma and Aquellé have come on board, and she used an interview with Puma to press for longer-term commitment rather than once-off deals. Her deeper concern is sustainability. 

“Most of these players are still working and they’re not fully invested in the sporting court because of the sustainability of it.” 

Her vision rests on three pillars, equal media coverage for women’s sport, stronger commercial funding for female athletes, and more women in decision-making roles.

On that last point she is encouraged by what she sees in netball, where the president and vice-president of Netball South Africa are both women. She is quick to add that inclusion runs both ways. “We need males who are fully hands-on and supportive,” she says, pointing to the federation’s male chief executive as exactly that kind of ally.

The path has not been smooth. Matjila was the first woman to announce for Varsity, and early on she was measured against deeper male voices and accused of straining when she was not. 

Stepping into the new digital role brought a fresh wave of comparison, this time with established presenters. “You must do it like them. I’m like, I’m not them,” she says. Her answer has been to hold on to her own voice. “If it has already been done, if somebody’s already doing it, then why am I there?”

Her advice to young women trying to break in is the motto she lives by, to start where you are with what you have. She points to her own audition for the TNL role, filmed on a phone with her nieces at a basketball tournament and done in a single take. 

“I have nothing to lose, but everything to gain.” 

She sent it off expecting nothing, and the rest is history.

The recognition that has come her way still moves her. gsport first told her story in 2025, and she says the platform gave her belief when she had little of her own. “You are seeing us even when we don’t see ourselves,” she says. “You don’t have to be big in order for gsport to see and recognise you.” 

It is a fitting creed for a broadcaster whose whole purpose is to make sure the women of South African sport are seen and heard, on the court and far beyond it.

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Main Photo Caption: Boitumelo Matjila, known across the game as BeeValtina, broke new ground as the first online presenter of the 2026 Telkom Netball League, taking supporters beyond the scoreboard to the dancing, the laughter and the untold stories that show the women of South African netball as far more than athletes on the court. All Photos: Supplied

Photo 2 Caption: As the league’s pioneering online voice, Matjila captured the moments the main broadcast never reached across the 2026 Telkom Netball League.

Photo 3 Caption: Behind every match, Matjila told the off-court stories that brought the women of the 2026 Telkom Netball League closer to fans nationwide.

Photo 4 Caption: From the courtside to the clinics, Matjila opened a fresh window on the 2026 Telkom Netball League through her trailblazing online coverage.