By Chris Totobela
Alleged racism may have abruptly ended former South African national handball player Ntomboxolo “Nana” September’s career of playing handball for her country, but it has not dimmed her hopes for developing the sport in Makhanda, her home town.
September, who also played netball for the Eastern Cape provincial side, still has her heart set on developing sport in the small town.
September started her netball journey in 1984 while she was still at a farm school before relocating to Makhanda where she played for Benjamin Mahlasela High School.
Her netball career took a huge turn when she made the Eastern Cape team, only for alleged financial mismanagement to prevent her from travelling with the selected side.
“I was so excited and looking forward to travelling with the EC team but due to corrupt officials, this hit us very hard as sport athletes and we ended up not going to the national championships that were due to take place,” she said.
Despite the setback, September continued with netball and she joined the famous netball team, All Saints. This team was formed by a group of players who were part of the sport programme organised by the Department of Sport Recreational Arts and Culture which was led by a Mr Hewana. The team was known to travel extensively to different cities for games.
In 1999 she was introduced to handball by Mr Mtywaku and Thembisa Ndabeni and immediately fell in love with the sport. She made an immediate impact as she was selected for the district team and went to the provincial trials where she made the Eastern Cape team.
Towards the end of the same year, she travelled to Cape Town where she was included in the national team that was going to take part in the Africa Cup of Nations.
Later that year she was also selected to be part of the team that toured Germany for a month before returning to participate in the All Africa Games hosted in South Africa where they did well against other African handball giants.
In February of 2000 she declined to be part of the national team when she was selected. “I decided to call it a day as I was not happy with the racism I experienced while I was on camp with the national team. I also experienced racism amongst us African people and it was so bad to such an extent that I decided not to ever go through that trauma again and told myself that as much as I enjoyed representing my country, I could not bear with what was happening behind the scenes.”
September started coaching young people in her township Phumlani Extension 3 and shared her expertise with them, but could not continue for long due to work commitments.
She said it was her dream to start a handball team in Makhanda and introduce youngsters to the sport that they were not really familiar with. She hopes to find time to live her dream.
She now plays occasionally for her work’s netball team, just to keep fit. “I still keep fit by playing now and then but my love for sports will never fade. I still have not ruled out the possibility of coaching young people,” she said.
“Lastly I would like to encourage young people to take sport very seriously as drugs are slowly taking over in Makhanda. I would also like to thank my former coaches and teammates for helping me become the player I was and my family for the love and support. Special thanks to you and your Grocott’s Mail team for thinking about me, I thought people had forgotten about me, but thanks to you now people will remember what I did for Makhanda and the country,” she said.
