In Their Own Words, That Winning Feeling at the 21st gsport Awards
Lonwabo Miso speaks for a living. Radio first, then television, a career built on finding the right words quickly and delivering them cleanly to an audience that expects nothing less. On the night she won two gsport Awards, she could not find a single one.
“I don’t have words. My job is to speak but this moment I am speechless. I am truly grateful. This means a lot. I work very very hard. To feel and see this recognition, it tells me to keep going. It tells me that I am on the right track,” Miso said, holding the SABC Sport Woman in Radio and SABC Sport Woman in TV certificates.
In the minutes after they came off the stage at the 21st gsport Awards, seven of the evening’s honourees were asked the same simple question. Not what the award meant for their sport, or for the industry, or for the next generation, but what it felt like right then, in that moment, with the applause still going.
What came back was not a set of polished acceptance speeches. It was seven people caught somewhere between disbelief and gratitude, most of them still holding a certificate, nearly all of them talking faster than usual.
Miso’s answer contains the thread that runs through all of them. She does not describe the award as an ending or a prize. She describes it as information. It tells me to keep going. It tells me that I am on the right track. For a woman who has spent her career from Voice of Wits through Radio 2000 and on to SABC Sport making the case for women athletes, often to rooms that needed convincing, recognition arrives less as a trophy than as permission to carry on doing exactly what she has been doing.
That reading turns up again and again across the seven, in different registers.
For Cecilia van Bers, the Gallo Images Woman in Print winner, it arrived first as pure shock. The photographer has built a body of work documenting developmental and elite women athletes alike, specialising in youth events like the Curro Podium Finals where she captures junior potential long before anyone else is watching. She did not think the room was watching her.
“I am over-excited. I didn’t expect it. For the other contenders that were with me, well done you earned this as well. Yes as I say I am surprised, totally surprised,” Van Bers said.
Read that again and notice how fast she turns outward. Two sentences into her own moment of recognition, she is handing credit to the women she was up against. It is a small thing and it is not a small thing. The categories at these awards are competitive by design, but the reflex of the winner in the first thirty seconds was to make sure her fellow nominees knew they had earned it too.
Katleho Malebana turned outward as well, and even faster. At 17, the School Sports Star of the Year is the youngest voice in this set by a distance and the only one to name a complicated feeling rather than a simple one. She is a professional at Mamelodi Sundowns, a captain of South Africa at junior level, and by any measure the most decorated schoolgirl footballer in the country. None of that is where she went first.
“I have mixed emotions. I am very happy and excited. My parents have been there from the beginning, so I am grateful for them. This Award is dedicated to them,” Malebana said.
The gap between the scale of her year and the plainness of that dedication is the whole story of a teenage athlete. Everything that has happened to her has happened at speed, and the people who made it possible were there before any of it started.
Hlobisile Khumalo has been working in a corner of the industry that almost nobody thinks to look at. The founder of Necco Production made history as the first woman to travel with the Proteas Women as a camera operator, and the Public Choice Award put her in front of the audience rather than behind it for once.
“It’s a special one. Thank you to SuperSport and Cricket South Africa for giving me the opportunity. This is for everyone who voted for me. This is new for us. People recognising camera operators and the work we do. I do it for the love. I do it for the storytelling and everyone who believes in me and books me to do the work,” Khumalo said.
This is new for us. Of the seven answers, hers is the only one that treats the recognition as belonging to a category of people rather than to a person. Camera operators are the reason anybody sees any of this. They are also, almost by definition, the people the camera never turns towards. Khumalo used her thirty seconds to say that a whole craft had been seen, and then to name the thing that keeps her doing it when nobody is looking, which is the storytelling itself.
Stephanie Mawdsley located herself in the room by locating somebody else in it first. The Endeavour AV Woman in Social Media winner built Steph Talks Football into a platform that reached tens of millions of viewers in 2025, covering the elite game, the grassroots game and the emerging talent coming through across the continent. She won it on the night South Africa’s greatest women’s footballer took her place in the gsport Hall of Fame.
“I feel over the moon. Honestly the timing of this award is fantastic. Portia is here, 2026 Hall of Fame. I am here, I cover women’s football. How did this happen? I am here. I did it,” Mawdsley said.
The repetition does the work without any help. I am here. I am here. I did it. A woman who covers women’s football, honoured in the same room and on the same evening as Portia Modise, the first African footballer to score 100 international goals. Mawdsley is not claiming equivalence. She is saying that the coverage and the achievement belong to the same story, and that on this particular night both were standing in the same place at the same time.
Dr Debbie Alexander was the one who looked at the room rather than the stage. The Inverroche Global Woman in Sport recipient sits as World Triathlon’s First Vice President and holds the only International Federation seat on the International Paralympic Committee Governing Board, which is to say she spends most of her working life in rooms where South African women are scarce.
“I am feeling so blessed. It’s been an incredible evening. To just be part of it, 20 years of women in sport and the fact that Kass has done such an amazing job to acknowledge all women in sport. I have huge gratitude for this occasion. I feel truly blessed,” Alexander said.
Her answer is the widest of the seven. She is not talking about her own portfolio or her own career. She is talking about what has been built, and she credits Kass Naidoo by name for building it. From a woman who governs global technical and medical frameworks for a living, the choice to spend her moment describing somebody else’s twenty-year project is telling.
Which brings the evening back to where it started.
Penny Heyns was gsport’s very first honouree, inducted into the inaugural Hall of Fame on 1 August 2006, before there was an archive, a Newsroom, a Hall of Fame with twenty-one names in it, or any evidence at all that a platform dedicated to South African women in sport could last. She received the 20 Years of gsport Award, and what she said was not about Atlanta, or the fourteen world records, or the fact that she remains the only woman in Olympic history to win both breaststroke titles at a single Games.
“I am very humbled. Every single time I attend gsport Awards I am just amazed at how well it’s doing and how it’s growing and the difference its making. And to see all of you guys, the platform that you are creating for women in sport and to be a part of it for the past 21 years, it’s been a privilege for me and I am humbled by the award tonight.”
Every single time I attend. That is a woman who has kept coming back for two decades, watching a thing she helped start turn into a thing that no longer needs her to survive. The difference its making. She is describing the six people above, and the twenty-one others honoured alongside them, and everyone who will stand on that stage in the years still to come.
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Seven answers, then, and seven different words for the same feeling. Speechless. Over the moon. Over-excited. Mixed emotions. Blessed. Humbled. Special. Not one of them stayed on themselves for longer than a sentence or two before turning outward, to parents, to fellow nominees, to colleagues in a craft nobody notices, to the people who vote and believe and book the work, to a founder who has spent twenty-one years insisting that this be done properly.
That is what winning felt like at the 21st gsport Awards. Not arrival. Confirmation, permission, and a reason to keep going.
Main Photo Caption: Sport, Arts and Culture Deputy Minister Peace Mabe was the VIP dignitary in attendance as gsport crowned 28 honourees across athlete, coach, federation, media and leadership categories at the 21st gsport Awards, where Lonwabo Miso completed a rare double, Portia Modise entered the Hall of Fame and Penny Heyns was recognised for two decades of service, at the Wanderers Club in Illovo, Johannesburg on Saturday, 8 August 2026. All Photos: Sachin du Plooy-Naran / Paul Mukwevho / (c) gsport 2026
Photo 2 Caption: Double honours went to Lonwabo Miso, who collected the SABC Sport Woman in Radio and SABC Sport Woman in TV certificates after building a broadcast career that runs from Voice of Wits through Radio 2000 to SABC Sport.
Photo 3 Caption: Photographer Cecilia van Bers, named Gallo Images Woman in Print, documents developmental and elite sportswomen alike, and spent her first seconds as a winner saluting the nominees who stood alongside her in the category.
Photo 4 Caption: At 17, School Sports Star of the Year Katleho Malebana captains South Africa at U17 and U20 level, plays professionally for Mamelodi Sundowns, and dedicated her evening to the parents who backed her from the very beginning.
Photo 5 Caption: Public Choice recipient Hlobisile Khumalo founded Necco Production and made history as the first woman to travel with the Proteas Women as a camera operator, bringing a rarely noticed craft into full public view.
Photo 6 Caption: Steph Talks Football founder Stephanie Mawdsley took Endeavour AV Woman in Social Media after a year that carried the women’s game to tens of millions of viewers across elite, grassroots and emerging talent levels.
Photo 7 Caption: World Triathlon First Vice President Dr Debbie Alexander received Inverroche Global Woman in Sport, and holds the only International Federation seat on the International Paralympic Committee Governing Board.
Photo 8 Caption: Olympic breaststroke champion Penny Heyns, gsport’s inaugural Hall of Fame inductee in 2006, accepted the 20 Years of gsport Award two decades after lending her name to a platform that was then wholly unproven.
Crédito: Link de origem