Nthabiseng Nini had never played a senior international match before she walked out at Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo and took three wickets for 17 runs. The Proteas Women won by six wickets. Nini was named Player of the Match on debut.
That moment, and the weeks of fear that preceded it back home, sit uncomfortably close together.
The bodies of women found in Kempton Park over recent weeks, the desperate search for missing runner Elizabeth “Tsontso” Moselakgomo, and the pervasive dread settling over ordinary women going about their daily lives have forced a reckoning. For many men in South Africa, the gap between what they take for granted and what women must actively manage every single day remains largely invisible. A man can lace his shoes for a 5am run with pace as his only concern. He can enter an e-hailing car at night without sending his location to a friend or staying on the phone “just in case.” He can hike alone with his dogs. None of that is bravery. It is simply Tuesday. For the women of South Africa, Tuesday has looked different for a very long time.
Against that backdrop, the Proteas Women’s historic maiden tour of Zimbabwe carries a weight that goes beyond cricket. The team has already sealed a five-match T20 international series 3-0 with two games remaining, all played at Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo.
Nini’s debut was only the opening act. The second match belonged to Anneke Bosch, who smashed 65 off 31 balls and then claimed 2 wickets for 5 runs in a 64-run victory, earning her Player of the Match honors. The third game was something else entirely. Captain Laura Wolvaardt walked in and scored an unbeaten 126 off 62 balls, her fourth T20I century. That innings brought her level with India’s Smriti Mandhana on 18 international centuries, the most by any woman in the game’s history, one ahead of Meg Lanning. It was also her highest individual T20I score as a South African woman, surpassing Shandre Fritz’s 116, and pushed her past 3,000 T20I runs in just 101 innings, second only to Australia’s Beth Mooney. Wolvaardt is one of only three women ever to score centuries in all three international formats. She holds the record for most runs in a single World Cup, 571 at the 2025 ODI World Cup, including a 169 in the semi-final and 101 in the final.
The fourth match takes place on September 17th, with the fifth and final game scheduled for September 19th. Meanwhile, the Springbok Women face Wales Women on Friday, September 18th at Cardiff Arms Park in the second round of the WXV Global Series Challenger, presented by Mitsubishi Electric.
What changed at FNB Stadium last week was nothing, and that is the problem. The attendance and energy for the Springbok Women’s match against the Black Ferns paled against the men’s game that followed on the same day. That match, at that iconic ground, deserved the same screaming, passionate South Africans who show up without hesitation for the men’s teams week in and week out. As coverage at https://www.timeout.com/south-africa/news/for-south-africas-women-support-should-go-beyond-the-sidelines-091726 observed, the gap between how women’s and men’s sports are supported reflects a broader pattern that extends far beyond the field.
These women train with the same intensity, compete at the highest levels, and carry the same green and gold. Nini, Bosch, Wolvaardt. They are not asking for sympathy. They are asking for the same crowds, the same noise, the same assumption of belonging that their male counterparts have always enjoyed. Supporting South Africa’s women champions should not be something done when convenient, or when the men are not playing. It should be as instinctive and loud as any other expression of national pride.
Whether that changes before the fourth match in Bulawayo on Wednesday is the question worth sitting with.