For me, the voice of the woman must be heard. The voice of the woman is her power — it’s her secret, her secret weapon.
Zanele Mdodana
In this insightful conversation, Joyce Chiamaka Nwezeh, of Africa for Africa Women, sits with Zanele Mdodana, a renowned Netball player in South African sports and a powerful advocate for women and youth empowerment who has been nominated for the PAWES 2025 Awards in the Women in Creative Industries Category.
Zanele’s journey from a ten-year-old player to the Assistant Coach of South Africa’s National Netball Team is a story of perseverance, mentorship, and purpose.
Introducing Zanele Mdodana
Zanele Mdodana:
I am Zanele Mdodana. I’m a Xhosa woman from the Eastern Cape in South Africa. The Eastern Cape is by the beach, by the sea — a very beautiful little town, a very small town in Africa.I’m also a young mom. My son is actually in Grade 11. So, I’ve got one child, yes, and I’m not married. So, I’m a single parent.
I’m a sports person — a sports coach and a sports lover. I started playing, specifically netball, at the age of 10. I’ve played since then at provincial level, national level, eventually captaining the national team of South Africa in netball. Then, after I retired, I ventured into coaching.
I’ve been in the national senior team for 10 years since 2005, and I retired in 2015. After that, I looked into coaching. So, I’ve coached at provincial level, at school level, and at university level.
That’s where my big breakthrough came when I was the Head Coach of Stellenbosch University — one of our top universities in South Africa. I was headhunted for that coaching position and worked there from 2017 until 2023.
In 2024, I got appointed as the Assistant National Coach of our national netball team, and that’s currently what I’m doing now.
Netball is my love. It’s my passion. I believe that I’ve been brought into this world, from a purpose perspective, to use netball as a tool to really empower and change lives — specifically the life of a girl child.
And yeah, that’s basically who I am. Thank you so much.
What Inspired Your Career in Sports
Zanele:
So, I was fortunate. When I started playing netball at the age of 10, I had a teacher in my primary school — Mrs. Zieli. I remember we played our first match and we lost that game 8–4. I was the goal shooter, and I was missing all the goals.I cried after that game because I was very sporty. I played tennis, I was an athlete, I did a whole lot of sports — but netball, I really loved. I said to her, “Ma’am, I’m not going to continue with the sport,” because the team was crying — everybody was sad that we lost.
Then she said to me, “You must never stop playing netball because I believe that one day you’ll be a star.”
She saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself at a very young age. And I’ve been fortunate to have people — coaches, teachers, mentors — who’ve identified the talent that I have and chose to hold my hand.
They got no payment in return. Their only reward was ultimately seeing me being true to the gift that I’ve been given and eventually ending up where I ended up.
The sacrifices they made — and how, if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have achieved what I achieved — are huge, because my parents were working and didn’t really have much time to be taking me from one place to another.
So, having that support from people that didn’t owe me anything meant a lot.
And I always knew that once I finished playing, I wanted to be a coach. I wanted to be that one person who holds one girl child’s hand and walks that path with her — to ultimately allow her to reach her destination, wherever that might be.
I’m a firm believer that your purpose is not what you do; your purpose is what happens to others when you do what you do.
What happens to others when you’re doing what you’re doing — that’s what matters. And I’ve lived by that, and that is what has kept me in netball.
It hasn’t been easy — it’s had its challenges, from player injuries to falling pregnant, missing out on World Cups, but eventually coming back and playing.
And I said to myself that I want to be that positive change and positive impact in someone else’s life.
Netball gives me the opportunity to do that. You don’t always get it right, but with the few players I’ve had the privilege of holding their dreams in the palm of my hands — and also, in the words of my tongue — what comes out of my mouth can make or break a player.
That’s how much power a coach actually has.
And I’ve just said that for as long as the passion still burns so deeply inside me, I want to make sure that I can contribute positively to someone else’s child’s life.
And I’ve been really blessed on this journey. So that’s been that for me.
Driving Change and Uplifting Others
What meaningful contributions have you made in your career to drive change and uplift others?
Zanele:
The biggest thing for me — because I come from the Eastern Cape — is that the Eastern Cape is full of talent. The talent here is massive, but there’s a lack of resources. There’s also a lack of people who say, “I’ll do it for nothing.” You know what I mean?And because I know that wasn’t my path, and I know the struggles of our people when it comes to having the finances to take their child to a private coaching academy, I’ve always said to myself that I need to give back to the sport that has given so much to me.
My fulfillment comes from seeing those players, those kids, really reach the highest level.
How I do that is by running netball clinics in my province that are open to anyone. They don’t discriminate — anyone can attend. I build partnerships with the municipality where we say, “Okay, I’ll run the clinic, just afford us the venue.”
We open it up to as many players as possible — they come. Because the thing is, if I’m going to charge for a clinic, it’s going to cost an arm and a leg, right? But I need to use my expertise to empower and share that knowledge with the youth of the province that made me.
So, I’m very much about giving back in that sense — making sure that all the knowledge I have is distributed back to the kids, and ensuring that the proper standard of netball is being taught. The right level, the basics, the fundamentals.
Because there’s a certain level — obviously from grassroots they grow — but if you miss it here, at the foundation stage, then they develop and take on very difficult habits that are hard to uproot when they’re older.
So, you’ve got to do it right at the foundation stage, and make sure that they are taught the right things — things they can grow with.
And then, from a high-performance perspective, because I’m also part of the development side, you get into environments where you have players who have very high academic demands and are also high-performance athletes. Now, they need to balance that life.
I need to make sure that, whatever happens, even though they play netball, they leave the institution with qualifications.
So, you need to create an environment where they can flourish on both sides of the coin.
They have dreams to be national players, to play overseas, to be seen by international franchises — and that dream, they put in my hands. They say, “Coach, we’re trusting you that you’ll find ways to help us achieve that.”
That’s a huge responsibility, because at the end of the day, they say, “You can take the horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink.”
So, it’s also about building those partnerships with your players — understanding the person before the player.
And then you create an environment that accommodates them but also sharpens them, so that the gold in them can come out.
It’s two very different levels, but it’s also about having that human element — putting the human at the center of it all.
Using the PAWES Platform for Greater Impact
Should you win the PAWES 2025 Award, how would you use the platform to influence others and drive change?
Zanele:
Woo!Yeah, I think it’s about being authentic, being yourself, and sharing information. It’s about really putting growth, progress, and empowerment at the center of everything.
For me, the voice of the woman must be heard. The voice of the woman is her power — it’s her secret, her secret weapon.
It’s something that needs to be allowed to speak and to be heard.
So, it would be a platform where we network, share ideas, and see where we can be the change we want to see — how we can use each other to improve the different areas in which we operate.
But it’s also about operating with utmost integrity.
One of my mentors once said to me, “Coach, the day you question my integrity, that’s when we shake hands and go our separate ways.”
And that’s one thing I hold very dear to my heart — in whatever space I operate, wherever I am — it’s integrity above all.
Ensuring Sustainability and Managing Risk
What’s your growth strategy to ensure sustainability and minimize risk in your work?
Zanele:
Yeah. Because I work with children — both underage and over 18 — even though those above 18 can make their own decisions, for the younger ones it’s very important to get the buy-in of the parents.
The buy-in and support of the parents — and not only in words but in them being there.
For example, when I run the clinics, I invite the parents to come. They need to see where their kids are and what environment they’re part of.
Because a child can easily say, “I’m going to a netball clinic,” and go in a completely different direction. So, I take full responsibility for the kids being there.
We create an environment where transport picks them up — they don’t just come on their own. They’re picked up, brought there, and we make sure there’s safety and security.
The environment must be safe, the facilities safe, the equipment safe. We are in a safe environment — that’s our head office, or where netball happens here in our little town.
We take care of the kids from a nutrition perspective, too. You can’t be sitting at a netball clinic for six or seven hours with no water or food. Nutrition becomes key.
We make sure we finish at a time when it’s not dark. Transport picks the kids up, drops them off, and there’s a reporting system to confirm that everybody is safely at home.
Otherwise, it defeats the purpose if there’s no safety and if it’s not an environment that’s properly controlled.
And that system has worked beautifully for us.
In previous times, before we understood the importance of protecting the children, we would just wait for them to arrive on their own — and we found that some of them never showed up.
So, we had to put in measures to make sure that once you’ve signed up, there’s a roster and there’s transport available for you to be picked up and brought to the training space.
And for me, it’s just a matter of — when you see the impact you’re making, there needs to be learning in all of this.
And when you see the impact, it might not be an impact on everybody, but that one kid who moves from being a player that came to Zanele Mdodana’s Netball Clinic to suddenly doing well at school — being a good netball player at school — then moving on to play at provincial level, and eventually getting a scholarship or bursary at a university level…That’s also something we do.
For example, Nelson Mandela University — my alma mater — looks at those players and identifies them: “Oh, you’re good at netball? Okay, let’s offer you a bursary to come study here, and we’ll pay for your tuition.”
It’s a beautiful process — the same one I went through — and now it’s the same one I’m implementing to help the youth in my city.
End of Interview
Interview conducted by Joyce Chiamaka Nwezeh for Africa for Africa Women (PAWES 2025 Awards Series).
