Mohau Ramashidja
CAF Women’s Champions League winning assistant coach Agnes Nkosi, used to get earrings as mocking gestures from the then Banyana Banyana coach Augustine Makalakalane, in the three caps she has played for the national team.
Makalakalane used this gesture to ridicule the now first female assistant coach to ever lead a club to continental glory, without the presence of her head coach in the dugout, in insinuating that she looked like a boy. Sundowns Ladies coach, Jerry Tshabalala, was not allowed to sit on the bench due to the fact that he did not possess any of the required CAF coaching badges but that of SAFA’s.
“This man (Makalakalane) made my life a living hell during my stint with Banyana Banyana,” Nkosi recalls. “We travelled by plane in all the three matches I played for the senior national women’s football team and he would buy me earrings at the airport in each camp I reported to under his stewardship. He said earrings would make me look better, more feminine, as in his own words: I looked like a boy.
“Playing under him was also tough,” Nkosi adds. “He used to shout at me at times whenever I made a simple mistake in training and insisted in stating that he didn’t call me up but someone else did. It was Fran (Hilton-Smith) who roped me into the national scene and told me she believed in my potential of competing and representing my country at that level.
“I used to cry every night whenever I was in camp. My then national team teammates like Sanah Mollo saw all of this and would encourage me to not pay him any mind and that he could see that I was onto him in how he conducted himself around other players. We had our suspicions (of his inappropriate behaviour with national team players) until players like Nthabiseng ‘Moemish’ Matshaba broke the silence (in 2010) regarding what was really happening to them in camp.”
Makalakalane was then later fired from his national team coaching job, following an investigation conducted by SAFA, which saw it fit to release the Bafana Bafana legend from his responsibilities, following allegations of sexual harassment.
In coach Tshabalala, though, both Matshaba and Nkosi, together with their other teammates, have found a genuine father figure who has always had their best intentions at heart. In the upcoming Hollywoodbets Super League season which will kick-off this coming month, Nkosi will serve as coach Tshabalala’s assistant in her first official professional league season after impressing him operating as a player/coach during the COSAFA CAF Women’s Champions league qualifiers and the main event in Egypt last year.
When Tshabalala realised that Nkosi’s legs were now beginning to give in, the Free State-born gaffer told her player to start working in her coaching badges, including the current CAF C Coaching Licence which allowed her to be on the bench at both the COSAFA CAF Women’s Champions League qualifier tournament and the CAF Women’s Champions League event. Sundowns went on to win both tournaments undefeated, with Nkosi left to make some key decisions in crucial matches, on her own.
In fact, it was coach Tshabalala who insisted that Nkosi should lead the team when the club management were suggesting their reserve league team head coach, Surprise Moriri to take over the reins.
“Hee-hee you know, God works in mysterious ways,” sitting in his office at Sundowns’ headquarters with his forearms leaning against his desk, Tshabalala began to narrate how things unfolded.
“The time I was telling Nkosi to work on her coaching badges I didn’t know that we would be in this predicament. Leading up to the COSAFA CAF Women’s Champions League qualifier tournament, COSAFA informed me that I would not be allowed to sit on the bench because of my coaching credentials. I only possess SAFA coaching licences and they needed a CAF (coaching badge as a minimum requirement). I was told though, that I would be allowed to do all media engagements, which I was okay with. The management of the club were also thinking of bringing in Surprise (Moriri) to fill in that gap and you know what happened? Just a week to go before we flew to Durban for the Champions League qualifiers, Nkosi’s coaching licence came through from CAF.
“My decision was simple from then,” Tshabalala adds. “She was the one who was going to lead the team and do the post match interviews and all. And I was okay with it. The club’s Chairman called and asked me and said: ‘Coach Jerry, are you sure about this? And I said: ‘Yes. Absolutely, chairman. Agnes will lead the team’. And we did it.”
And if tears are but a jostle, a prayer to the footballing gods that their bestowed upon gifts on the ones whom they had predestined for greatness, are now growing weary because of the trials endured; then every sheared tear by Nkosi has certainly carried her to be where she is now.
Nkosi concedes that those answered prayers came as a series of little miracles, though, leading a young girl considered to be a misfit by those around her, playing a sport which possessed no potential of being an actual solid career in her country then, to right to where she is now –and that is in the history books and a promising future up ahead.
“I’ve always been different whilst growing up,” Nkosi says. “I grew up playing football with boys and never liked wearing skirts. My primary school days were the hardest because the teachers there would always insist that I should wear a skirt to school. I didn’t like that, not even one bit,” she chuckles. “So what I would do was leave for school every morning at 6:30 wearing my school pants and with my skirt in my schoolbag. It was a 30-minute walk from Muzimhlophe hostels (Soweto) were I stayed with my mom and she would wonder why I left that early. Our school only started at 7:30am and there was a bush not far from our school where I use to go to and changed the skirt they wanted me to change into. Leaving early allowed me enough time to do just that. One day she asked me: ‘Kanti uya phi ekuseni kangaga’ (which is IsiZulu for: where are off to this early in the morning). And I would say: ‘Ngi sayo shintsha ma’ (which loosely translates: I’m going to stop by the bushes and change into my school dress, ma),” she says bursting out with a raucous laugh.
More humorous incidents happened when she got to meet her father for the first time in the year 2011. Nkosi was 24 years old then. “My dad is a strict Zulu man and when we finally met for the first time, he welcomed me, who I was, how I looked and my preferred style of clothing. He used to work as a security guard in some store in town and I would visit him there quite often. People would pass and greet: ‘Good day gentlemen’ and he would burst out laughing, making the whole incident light, fun and humorous. He never judged or questioned my preferences. Not once. He accepted me as I was and we had wonderful moments together up until he passed in 2019. I enjoyed the time I got to spent with him.”
With her mother the only parent that she is left with, following her father’s passing, Nkosi says one of her dreams is to one day move her out of the Mzimhlophe hostels in Soweto to a new living area, given the sacrifices she had seen her mother make just to take care of her and three other siblings.
“That’s one of my dreams which I wish to accomplish,” Nkosi says. “My mom is now 76 (years old) and I’m the one who forced her to retire from her domestic worker job when COVID-19 hit back in 2020. I didn’t want to risk it and I’m glad that she finally gave in to me finally taking care of her, whilst she’s busy looking after two of my sister’s kids. My childhood dream has always been to force her into retirement and get her one of those nice houses she would take me with at Balfour Park, and have people working for her, for a change. Hopefully this new coach path that I’m embarking on will enable me to achieve just that in time.”
Meanwhile, Nkosi has welcomed CAF’s decision to have this year’s CAF Women’s Champions League to be played in South Africa, adding that it will serve to their advantage as Sundowns Ladies endeavour to defend their title.
“Let them come so that we can give them a proper hiding,” Nkosi says with a chuckle, however firm at this utterance. “We want to defend our league title this coming season and that is a step in the right direction in working towards our ultimate goal which is pushing for our second star. It can be done.”
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