Katleho Malebana, the Teenage Captain Carrying a Nation’s Belief
In 2022, Katleho Malebana stood at the edge of the pitch in Morocco as a ballgirl, watching Banyana Banyana lift the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations title. She was thirteen, and as the South African players celebrated she was already making herself a promise. Less than three years later she was training alongside those same players, called into the senior national setup as a teenager who had captained South Africa at two age groups and broken into one of the most demanding club sides on the continent.
That arc, from the sideline to the squad, is why gsport features Malebana the day after Youth Day. Her story is a working model of the pathway South African women’s and girls’ football is trying to build, and she tells it without a trace of entitlement.
It began in a Boksburg backyard. Malebana first found the game watching her older brother train with their father, copying the drills from the window until she asked to join in. Her father spotted the talent early. Her route to Mamelodi Sundowns was almost accidental: she went along to her brother’s trials, brought a ball of her own, and started juggling on the sidelines until a scout asked her age and placed her in the club’s boys’ development.
Being the only girl in that setup shaped her more than any single coaching session could. The coaches, she says, never went soft on her. “Football is not about gender. It’s just about how hard you work yourself and how much you really want it,” Malebana says.
She points to that environment, including a spell testing herself in the Kapstadt Cup with the Sundowns boys’ academy, as the thing that toughened her game and taught her to carry the lessons of the boys’ side into her football with the girls.
Leadership came early and often. Malebana captained South Africa at under-15 and under-17 level, and she is clear about the kind of leader she is.
“I’m not a very talkative captain. I just make sure that all players are mentally ready.”
U17 South African Women’s Football Captain, Katleho Malebana
Having been in national camps since the age of thirteen, she knows the anxiety a first call-up brings, and she sees her job as steadying the younger players through it, reminding them that they represent a whole country and that one game can change a life.
Asked just as often to lead players older than herself, at under-20 level and at the Region 5 Games in Windhoek, she says the trick is mutual respect and belief rather than volume, learning to read and work with very different personalities.
The honours have followed the responsibility. In 2023 she was named player of the tournament as her side defended its COSAFA Schools Cup crown. In 2024 she led the SA under-15 team to a maiden CAF African Schools Football Championship title in Zanzibar, in a final against Morocco that closed a circle she still feels. The following year she helped the SA under-20s to a runners-up finish at the COSAFA Under-20 Women’s Championship. Then, at the end of 2025, she captained Mamelodi Sundowns to the CAF Under-17 Girls Integrated Football Tournament title in Zimbabwe, a campaign in which her side scored 30 goals and conceded just one.
Her breakthrough at senior club level arrived in the same period. Malebana marked her first-team debut for Sundowns against Richmond United by scoring in a 6-0 win, and this season she was part of the squad that won the Hollywoodbets Super League once again.
Katleho Malebana, the Teenage Captain Carrying a Nation’s Belief
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Training every day alongside Banyana Banyana internationals is, she admits, physically and mentally brutal, the intensity far beyond anything she knew in age-group football. She does not flinch from it. “I know that I’m the future of Sundowns,” she says, describing how she banks everything the senior players teach her to carry back to her national age groups, a bridge between the generations South African football is counting on.
In February 2025, still only sixteen, she was called into the senior Banyana Banyana setup, back among the coaches she had watched in Morocco. The memory of that 2022 final returned at once.
“I was actually crying when I saw them lifting the cup, saying that one day that was going to be me.”
Before she settled into the Sundowns senior side, Malebana spent a period at the University of Pretoria, known as Tuks. A different style of play and more demanding coaches taught her to adapt, a lesson she credits with making her more coachable when she came back, and one she believes prepared her for the gap between local and international football.
On the pitch she describes herself, modestly, as a simple player: an attacking midfielder who can also sit deeper as a defensive midfielder, and who prefers the assist to the goal, though goals make her happy too. She is proud of her control and her technical range, and honest that physicality is the part of her game she is working hardest to build. She models herself on the Banyana Banyana playmaker Linda Motlhalo and on Aitana Bonmatí at Barcelona.
Her ambitions are stated plainly: the World Cup this year, the chance to test herself against the best in the world, and one day a move overseas. What keeps her grounded, she says, is her family, who do the hard work behind the scenes to keep her humble. Named the gsport School Sport Star of the Year in 2024, she is already the kind of role model the award is meant to surface.
For the girl in Boksburg who is still growing up and dreaming, Malebana’s message is the one this Youth Month is built around. “Anything is possible, only if they believe in themselves,” she says, before adding the line she repeats to herself on the hard days. “They should go out there, chase their dreams. Anything is possible.” Or, in the words she lives by, “If you believe you can achieve.”
Main Photo Caption: Katleho Malebana has come through the Mamelodi Sundowns development system into the club’s senior side, captaining South Africa at junior level and earning a call into the senior national setup as a teenager. All Photos: Supplied
Photo 2 Caption: Malebana captains Bantwana, South Africa’s under-17 side, through their FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup qualifying campaign.
Photo 3 Caption: Malebana has broken into the Sundowns first team in the Hollywoodbets Super League while still in her teens.
Photo 4 Caption: The football talent operates as an attacking midfielder who can also anchor the defensive midfield, prizing vision and the assist over goals.
Crédito: Link de origem
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