Lonwabo Miso Breaks Down Doors on Historic gsport Awards Night
On the night of Saturday, 8 August 2026, Lonwabo Miso walked into the Wanderers Club in Illovo, Johannesburg as one of the country’s hardest working sports broadcasters and walked out as a piece of gsport history, the first person ever to sweep both broadcast media categories, the SABC Sport Woman in Radio and Woman in TV awards, at the same gsport Awards ceremony.
Standing on stage for the second time, the Radio 2000 and SABC Sport star was telling herself not to cry, with her daughter in the room and her mother and brother watching at home, and a judging panel of peers and role models confirming what the audience already knew. The historic double was not a gift of talent alone, it was a receipt for years of unseen graft, and Miso says exactly that.
“These two awards mean to me that the work that I put in, the sleepless nights, the sacrifices that I make actually are for a reason,” said Miso.
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The work began in Kwa-Thema in Ekurhuleni, in a soccer-crazy home where Sunday mornings meant the Comrades Marathon on television and the Olympics playing in the background. The girl known today as Sis waseKwa-Thema had no broadcasting dream at all. She wanted the built environment, designing houses and bridges, until the schoolgirl who played sport and did public speaking and debate finally reconciled with what her family had seen all along, that one day she would be on TV because she was talkative and confident.
Her first classroom was Voice of Wits, the campus radio station that refused to behave like one. Volunteers attended press conferences and covered marches, and were treated as working journalists rather than students learning the craft. The entrance interview, before a full panel including a news editor and a programmes manager, remains the toughest she has faced, and she appreciates it now for the standard it set.
“It taught me from then that the work that you put in is very important and there’s no time to be playing.”
2026 Woman in Radio and Woman in TV Awards winner, Lonwabo Miso
Campus radio opened the door to an internship at Jacaranda FM and then to Radio 2000, where she settled comfortably into reading and writing bulletins. Comfort, however, did not survive contact with gsport founder Kass Naidoo, who challenged her that if she could write bulletins every day, surely she could write articles, and opened her eyes to voiceovers, articles and the MC stage beyond the bulletin desk.
The challenge unlocked a career principle that has never left her: Always do more than what you are tasked to do. Appointed #gsport15 Sub-Editor on 1 July 2020, in the teeth of the pandemic, Miso arrived at the gsport Newsroom carrying the anxiety of doing women’s sport justice, sustained by Naidoo’s insistence that despite the pandemic, the work would keep going.
“You don’t want to shortchange women because it’s a women in sports organisation. You still want to show up, in fact I think you need to show up even more.”
The unglamorous reps followed. Radio had already taught her that there is no dead air, but hosting gsport IG Lives and Twitter Spaces made her a better interviewer. She wrote her own questions and structured every conversation with a beginning, a middle and an end, building camera comfort in sessions nobody was grading. By the time television finally called, viewers refused to believe it was her first time on screen.
The graft earned trust. At Radio 2000 she rose from the bulletin desk to the sports presenter chair on drive time, and she spends that trust deliberately, leading her bulletins with the Proteas Women, the Springbok Women, Banyana Banyana and Gerda Steyn, unapologetically and sometimes exclusively, because a national platform is mileage for women’s sport. She values, too, that the station does not micromanage her choices, a trust earned because everything she puts on air is credible and considered.
“I’ve got plus minus two million listeners at Radio 2000. So whoever is tuning in, they’re going to learn about a woman in sport,” said Miso.
Television answered with responsibility of its own. Having gained extensive experience in pitchside reporting, and after a two-game studio audition at the previous edition, Miso was named one of the main anchors of the Wafcon 2026 coverage alongside Andile Ncube and Vusiwe Ngcobo, and was handed a semi-final of the continent’s biggest women’s football tournament. To be trusted by the public broadcaster as one of the leading voices on an important continental tournament was, she says, a huge step, a confidence booster and confirmation that she is on the right track and needs to keep going.
Getting there demanded a sacrifice of its own. Early in 2026 she left gsport, the platform that launched her writing career, to commit fully to her SABC Sport career. The call was hard, she admits, but necessary, allowing her to zone in on the work while carrying with her the friendships, the lessons and the deeper understanding of women’s sport that gsport gave her.
The rewards have already begun to ripple outward. Since the awards, more young girls follow her, message her and ask what it takes to reach her level, and though she sometimes remains the only woman in a press conference room, she is confident that being there, and doing incredible work there, will inspire the next one through the door.
It is when the conversation turns to young Black women trying to claim space in live sports broadcasting that the theme of her story is said out loud.
“The world is not trying to give you a chance. So you need to fight for your chances. Doors are closed. You need to break them down.”
The advice she hands to every young girl who visits her studio is cut from the same cloth. Sports broadcasting is a cutthroat industry, she warns, technical and heavy on research, and passion alone is not enough. Given an assignment, a Banyana game, the job is to research, know the players, watch matches and go to the stadiums, because effort brings returns. Your work ethic, she tells them, should confidently top that of most people you know.
Her dream for gsport is painted in the same colours as her own rise, banners so full of sponsor logos that fitting them all in becomes the happy complication, so that the platform that kept its people working and paid through Covid can keep opening doors for athletes, administrators and media practitioners alike.
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And for the next Sis waseKwa-Thema watching from a township or rural area and daring to believe, her message is her own life, offered as proof.
“If Lonwabo was able to come from where we come from and still get to the great stages, the gsport stages, the Wafcon stages, the Fifa World Cup stages, surely I too can do it,” said Miso.
It is not going to be easy, she adds, but it not being easy does not mean you have to stop. It means you fight a little harder. On the evidence of the Wanderers stage on Saturday, 8 August, the fight, and the work, are worth it.
Main Photo Caption: Lonwabo Miso became the first person in gsport history to sweep both broadcast media categories at the 21st gsport Awards at the Wanderers Club in Illovo, Johannesburg on Saturday, 8 August 2026. Photo: Paul Mukwevho / gsport
Photo 2 Caption: Miso says sleepless nights and sacrifice carried her to the historic Woman in Radio and Woman in TV double at the Wanderers Club in Illovo. Photo: Sachin du Plooy-Naran Photographer / gsport
Photo 3 Caption: Radio 2000 and SABC Sport broadcaster Miso urges the next generation of women in sports media to break down closed doors through hard work. Photo: Sachin du Plooy-Naran Photographer / gsport
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