Zewande Hlatshwayo Knows Exactly Where She Belongs
Zewande Hlatshwayo was 18 the first time she walked into a stadium for work rather than for pleasure. The club was Durban Ladies WFC, the competition was the Hollywoodbets Super League, and the ground was Sugar Ray Xulu Stadium in Clermont. “Being there, watching football, watching the ladies play and talking to local fans, I knew then and there that I belonged in the sports world and there’s nothing else I’d rather do.”
A year on, the working week would test someone twice her age. Hlatshwayo is in her second year of a diploma in sports management at Newbridge Graduate Institute in Musgrave, with graduation targeted for 2028, and she fits that around content creation and social media coordination for football and rugby clubs, most of it for Durban Ladies WFC.
She was born and raised in Ladysmith, uMnambithi, and has since claimed Durban as her own city. “The people in Durban are as warm as the weather,” she says. “Ubuntu is a concept you see being executed every single day here and it’s beautiful to witness.”
The love of sport itself was inherited. “My love for sport comes from my dad,” she says. “He’s a huge football fan, but he was always knowledgeable about other sports too, athletics, tennis, rugby, even WWE sometimes. It was his respect and genuine knowledge for all sports that made me fall in love with it.”
The medium came first, though, and she is candid about the order. “I think I’ve always been a social media girlie before I was a sports girlie,” she says.
“I’ve always loved documenting and sharing my most beautiful and most real moments so others can see and feel them too.”
Durban Student, Content Creator and Sports Presenter, Zewande Hlatshwayo
“I love people and letting them in, my vlogs feel like I’m on FaceTime with someone for the whole day.” That instinct, to collapse the distance between presenter and audience, runs through everything she has built since.
The returns arrived fast. Within a month of taking sports content seriously, Hlatshwayo was invited onto Thobela FM, a national station, to talk about using social media as a sports journalist. “I’ve never felt so seen, heard and supported,” she says. “All the hours spent editing, drafting scripts and overthinking were paying off, so early! It was incredible.”
The second breakthrough she engineered herself. She approached DUT Sport, and now presents for them through their Varsity Football season. “Never in my life did I think I’d be part of one of my favourite institutions, working in one of my favourite sports, presenting and interviewing people,” she says. “All this at 19? My God is truly miraculous.” The detail worth holding onto is that nobody discovered her. She asked.
Underneath the momentum sits a correction she has already had to make. “That hard work will beat talent any day,” she says of her steepest learning curve.
“I used to think because presenting and social media came naturally to me, opportunities would just come my way. But in this industry, it’s about who is willing to put in the extra, extra hours despite being talented.”
The practical expression of that lesson is the work she does off camera. “I got into sports wanting to be a presenter, which I am doing, but taking those behind-the-scenes jobs puts me in rooms with people doing what I ultimately want to do.”
“We all start somewhere. The connections I’ve built from being BTS have helped me so much,” she says. It is an unglamorous strategy, and it is working.
Her sense of what is possible was built by watching other women do it first. The earliest was Carol Tshabalala, the broadcaster she calls the First Lady of Football. “My earliest memory of seeing a woman on screen in sport has to be the Queen herself,” Hlatshwayo says. “Decades in the game and she still does it so effortlessly.”
Then came Nqobile Khwezi, who settled an argument Hlatshwayo was having with the advice she kept being given. “Her versatility is what makes me adore her, F1, tennis, rugby, cricket, you name it,” she says. “When I was doing research people kept saying to niche down or pick one sport to be successful, and she didn’t. And look at her now.”
The third is Zenande Funani, and the near-rhyme is not lost on her. “Zewande / Zenande? Meant to be!” she says. “I fell in love with her presenting style during SA20. When I watch her on camera, it feels like she’s on a video call with me.” Three women, several decades of South African sports broadcasting between them, and a 19-year-old reading that chain as an instruction.
Ask her what actually makes content work and the answer is unfashionably plain. “Consistency and authenticity,” she says. “The biggest names in digital media are who they are today because they kept going despite the ups and downs, and they stayed true to themselves even when the cameras were on.” Her advice to anyone starting out is blunter still. “Do not do it for the fame or the numbers. Do it because you can’t see yourself doing anything else.”
She found gsport last year, at 18, around the time of the 20th gsport Awards. “Seeing how women, just women, were celebrated for the work they do in sport, I was like, ‘Ahhhh I’m gonna like this,’” she says. “Women in sport have come a long way, but there’s still a long way to go, and gsport is at the forefront of it all.”
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Her message to the girls coming behind her is delivered at volume. “Stand your ground, stay consistent and never give up,” she says. “You’re going to be told you won’t be as good as the guys. Never let that stop you.” She is just as clear on where to begin. “Don’t wait for one day to start. Start now. Reach out to other women in sport. They will be your saving grace and community. And it’s always super chic to be the youngest in the room.”
Asked for her greatest career ambition, Hlatshwayo does not reach for a job title. “To be a representation of a dream realised.”
Main Photo Caption: Zewande Hlatshwayo is a 19-year-old content creator and presenter who handles social media for Durban Ladies WFC alongside a second-year diploma in sports management at Newbridge Graduate Institute in Musgrave, and she has built her own platform by documenting women’s football from inside the game rather than from the stands. All Photos: Supplied
Photo 2 Caption: Collegians Rugby Club in Kings Park is another of the grounds Hlatshwayo works at, covering Castle Lager Murray & Peter Taylor Cup rugby.
Photo 3 Caption: Away fixtures in the KZN Women’s League are part of the workload Hlatshwayo carries for Durban Ladies WFC across a full football season.
Photo 4 Caption: Durban Ladies WFC cup football forms part of the brief Hlatshwayo covers, capturing moments her own audience would otherwise never see.
Crédito: Link de origem