IG Live Returns with Zomusa Thango: Two Roads to Being Seen
Lonwabo Miso did not want to write. Early in her radio career, when gsport founder Kass Naidoo asked whether she had tried it, her answer came quickly. “And I’d be like, no, me, I just want to read. I’m happy to read.”
Prabashnee Naidoo had the opposite problem. She had a story and no one to tell it to. In 2025 she came home from the World Masters Games in Taipei with a silver medal, part of the first female volleyball team out of Africa to compete in the Forty Plus category, and watched the news stall within her own circles. “I would say volleyball is like almost a forgotten sport,” she says.
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One met Kass Naidoo at the SABC. The other found gsport while scrolling on her phone. Both walked onto the stage as winners at the 21st gsport Awards in 2026, and both now feature in Making Women’s Sport Visible: 20 Years of gsport, Kass Naidoo’s memoir of two decades spent putting South African sportswomen in the spotlight.
They told their stories on a gsport Instagram Live hosted by Zomusa Thango, who opened by staking her claim as the first person to pre-order the book. Prabashnee Naidoo had prophesied that she would win that race, until her network let her down.
Miso began at Voice of Wits, the campus station, before Radio 2000 and SABC Sport. Kass Naidoo became her sounding board early on. “And she became a person I could communicate to, to say, Kass, this is what I want to do.”
The first push was into print. “But it was just the fear of trying new things,” Miso says. She started writing for gsport, profiling women in sport. Then came the bigger ask. “And I said, Kass, I really want to be on TV.”
The answer was gsport’s Instagram Lives, where Miso sat in the host’s chair and interviewed guests.
“That’s when I think my comforts with the camera really started and that’s when I started believing that, hey, maybe, maybe I can actually do this thing.”
Former IG Live Host for @gsport4girls, Lonwabo Miso
The doors kept opening along the same road. Her chance to host a women in sport show on SABC followed her work on a gsport Awards announcement. In 2026 she made history as the first person to win both Woman in Radio and Woman in Television at the same gsport Awards ceremony.
Her advice to young women who never get to meet a mentor is direct. “The next best thing is to just show up and show yourself.” She attends press conferences other presenters skip, and still counts too few women in those rooms. “And to this day, I’m still not happy with the little number of ladies that I get to see at press conferences, at events.”
Showing up is only half of it. “Work ethic is almost like two of my favourite words put together,” she says.
“Because I feel like when everything else has failed you, work ethic is what’s going to carry you.”
Lonwabo Miso
She knows the scrutiny is sharper because “women are under an even bigger microscope.” Every viewer, whether they watch for one minute or 30, “must know something that they didn’t read on Twitter, that they didn’t read in an article.” When someone offers her a sport outside her comfort zone, she says yes first and studies overnight. “Okay, let me watch a few YouTube videos.”
Prabashnee Naidoo’s road started at the age of ten, with a PE teacher and a love for the game that grew with every win. She went on to earn eight provincial caps and two South African caps, and played internationally in Mauritius in 1998 before Taipei, where she competed at 47.
After the silver medal, she “made a commitment to my team that I would get some recognition for us.” She had never been a social media person, but she found gsport4girls online and tagged the platform in a post. When gsport liked it, she says, “it felt like winning a gold medal.”
An invitation to the 2025 gsport Awards followed. She arrived with her teammates on a mission to tell everyone that women in volleyball were playing internationally and winning medals. Kass Naidoo greeted her by name. “That was like such a special moment.”
When she shared her feedback after the event, the reply changed everything. “And Kass herself said, use the platform to grow in sport. Now that was, that was the green light moment for me.” She had never expected her presence to count. “But it mattered. We mattered.”
At the national championships in Johannesburg, she picked up her phone and pressed record.
“Hi, I’m Bashi Naidoo, and I’m a volleyball player and I’m on a mission to bring volleyball to the fore.”
Volleyball International, and 2026 gsport Supporter of the Year, Prabashnee Naidoo
The Monday after the tournament, Mpumi Manyisi, who had won Woman in Print at the 2025 gsport Awards, where the two met, reached out about her youth sport show on SABC’, G.O.A.T.S. Like Us’. gsport featured her in its newsletter first, and then volleyball reached the screen. East Coast Radio followed, then her own courtside interviews with players. She admits that she “was scared”, yet “people connected with me.”
Children began to reach out. “Are you coming to the IPT? You’re my role model.” She went on to secure a second episode of ‘G.O.A.T.S. Like Us’ for volleyball.
At the 21st gsport Awards she was named Supporter of the Year, a goal she had pinned to her own vision board. Her citation recognises how she advocates for volleyball “through her B’volleyd Movement, driving grassroots development, donating school equipment, and securing unprecedented media and television exposure for the sport.” She is also a 20 Years of gsport Ambassador. “This is a collaboration,” she says.
Both women know what they want from the book. Miso is looking forward to the timeline and to “seeing the women in sport in South Africa celebrated, you know, because to this day, we don’t get enough of that.”
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Prabashnee Naidoo wants the beginning. “Like, what was Kass thinking? How long did she sit with the story?” She knows the spark. “We know that Penny Heyns won that medal and that was the inspiration, but, but was there an idea that came before this?”
Making Women’s Sport Visible: 20 Years of gsport launches on 30 November 2026. Pre-orders are open at 20yearsofgsport.com, and readers who order by 31 October 2026 qualify for the pre-order benefits.
For every young woman trying to break into the industry, Miso keeps her advice short. “The trick is to just keep going. So just keep going.”
Main Photo Caption: Lonwabo Miso and Prabashnee Naidoo, both winners at the 21st gsport Awards, shared their journeys from radio studio and volleyball court to television, and what they hope to find in Kass Naidoo’s memoir Making Women’s Sport Visible: 20 Years of gsport, on a gsport Instagram Live hosted by Zomusa Thango on 22 October 2026. Image: gsport
Crédito: Link de origem