For the boxers training at Mdantsane’s Sisonke Boxing Club, the hardest part of the sport is not the training itself but the waiting. Fights are scarce. Ratings are at risk. Careers can stall before they properly begin. It is against that backdrop that Sisanda Matshoba, daughter of former professional boxer Nkoi Matshoba, has decided to stop waiting and start promoting, launching her own company, Sisonke Sisa Production, to develop talent in both the amateur and professional ranks.
Her entry into promoting places her among a growing wave of young women taking on a role long dominated by others. Provinces such as the Free State, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal have already seen female promoters emerge, some of whom have organised tournaments of their own. The country’s blanket of inactivity, which has left fighters idle for long stretches, is precisely what has pushed these women to act.
The most recent example came in Middelburg, where two women, Relebogile Mashego and Megan Pieterse, launched their promoting careers with a show staged under the banner of Main Bout Boxing Promotions (MBBP). That tournament was scheduled to be headlined by Mthatha’s Phaphama Rhonono defending his SA welterweight title against Jabulani Makhense in August. When Makhense failed to make the weight, the title fight was cancelled, but the tournament itself went ahead, a small sign of resilience in a sport struggling to fill its calendar.
Matshoba’s new promotion will focus on boxing at development level. While it will work with other clubs, its attention will centre on giving opportunities to the boxers training at the Sisonke Boxing Club, a gymnasium renowned for producing talent across the board. The club’s record is hard to argue with. It has produced champions such as Siyakholwa Kuse, who remains the only fighter in the province to win a coveted WBC title after dethroning Filipino Melvin Jerusalem for the mini-flyweight version in May. Kuse achieved that feat under Manny Fernandes in Johannesburg, but his roots remain at Sisonke.
The club can also point to SA junior-bantamweight champion Moyisi Booi, SA junior-flyweight contender Abongile Jacob, and scores of amateur boxers, many of whom won medals at the national championships in Cape Town in July. Yet even with that depth of talent, the biggest challenge facing these fighters is the lack of fighting opportunities. For Jacob, the stakes are immediate: his lofty rating is at risk of slipping away.
Matshoba said plans were afoot to bring Jacob back into the ring by December to save his rating, which is expected to improve to the top spot. Her ambitions, though, stretch beyond a single comeback. “Besides our objective to give young boxers a stage to shine, we also want to integrate boxing into the value chain of entertainment, sport tourism and provincial political and heritage calendar,” she said.
Meanwhile, that broader vision is already being tested in the marketplace of tenders and applications. The company has applied for the provincial Women In Boxing Series, with the winning promoter expected to be announced by the department of sport, recreation, arts and culture. It has also tendered for the well-documented Steve Tshwete Boxing Series, which is expected to punch off in Mpumalanga on November 21. “We want to make our own mark in these big events to advance the careers of young female and male boxers,” Matshoba said.
For the fighters waiting in Mdantsane’s gymnasium, and for young promoters like Mashego and Pieterse who have already taken the leap, the hope is that these new ventures translate into regular work in the ring. Boxing SA chief executive officer Tsholofelo Lejaka offered some encouragement on that front, saying that although promoters for the series were yet to be announced, the focus would be on young ones who are yet to make their mark in the industry. “We want these tournaments to serve as an apprenticeship for both young promoters and ring officials,” he said.
The broader shift is one that observers of the South African fight game have been tracking closely, and it has been examined in detail in coverage such as that carried at https://theherald.co.za/sport/more-sport/2026-10-04-new-wave-of-young-female-promoters-tackle-sa-boxing-inactivity/. What it points to, ultimately, is a generation of women who looked at an idle sport and decided to build the calendar themselves, one tournament at a time. Whether Matshoba’s Mdantsane fighters get the regular bouts they need may depend on which of these tenders comes home.