In the picture is Thembelani Majingo with the boys international ( Dinaledi Football Academy) Botswana
South African professional footballer Thembelani Majingo’s grassroots foundation sends seven young prospects to Botswana for elite trials — the latest milestone in a remarkable rural talent pipeline built on football clinics and quiet determination
By Martin Weche
Seven young footballers from the Thembelani Majingo Foundation in South Africa’s North West Province have been formally invited to attend an elite assessment programme at Dinaledi Football Academy in Oodi, Botswana, from 28 June to 1 July 2026, marking the latest and most significant milestone in what is quietly becoming one of southern Africa’s most compelling grassroots football development stories.
The players, drawn from a cohort previously scouted and assessed by Dinaledi’s technical team, are expected to arrive at the Oodi-based academy on Sunday 28 June. The four-day programme will expose them to professional coaching, structured performance evaluation, and the kind of high-intensity environment that the academy — a structured, high-performance youth football institution that develops players aged 6 to 19 — describes as one that integrates football excellence, academic progression, and character formation.
Dinaledi will cover accommodation and meals throughout the assessment period. Players are required to arrive with their own studded boots and personal training equipment. For boys who grew up in a remote corner of the North West Province with little football infrastructure and even less exposure to professional structures, simply receiving that invitation letter represents a world transformed.
The foundation behind this journey belongs to Thembelani Majingo, a 27-year-old South African professional midfielder who hails from Madibogo Village in the Ratlou Municipality. Majingo’s own career has been marked by both real promise and painful near-misses. A product of the now-defunct Platinum Stars academy, he came through the club’s youth structures alongside two players who went on to achieve considerable international recognition — Kobamelo Kodisang and Gift Links — forming what he describes as a formidable trio in the club’s development ranks.
When Platinum Stars were sold and rebranded as Cape Umoya United in 2018, Majingo was part of the transition, featuring during the 2018/19 season before being released ahead of the following campaign. He subsequently joined VTM FC in the Botswana Premier League, keeping his professional career alive while watching former academy peers rise to greater heights. Kodisang moved to Bidvest Wits before signing with a Portuguese club, while Links secured a deal with an Egyptian side and later established himself in Denmark’s top flight with Aarhus GF.
“I formed the best trio at Platinum Stars Development with Gift Links and Kobamelo Kodisang — you can see where they are now,” Majingo has said, acknowledging the divergence in their paths while noting his own resilience. “I am the unfortunate one.” That candour, however, has not curdled into bitterness. Instead, it appears to have sharpened his sense of purpose. Where his own pathway narrowed, he has resolved to widen it for others.
The Thembelani Majingo Foundation operates as a non-profit organisation built around a simple but transformative idea: that football can be a credible career pathway even for children growing up in South Africa’s most underserved rural communities. The foundation’s flagship interventions are its soccer clinics, targeted at boys aged 8 to 14 in areas that rarely appear on the scouting maps of professional clubs.
In October 2024, the foundation hosted two days of clinics on 4 and 5 October at the Setlagole Artificial Ground within the Ratlou Municipality — the same district Majingo himself comes from. More than 300 children attended from municipalities across the North West Province. Of those, only 15 were selected for further assessment at high-performance institutions across the country as part of a deliberate talent identification programme the foundation describes as a “talent search movement.”
The results have been concrete. Some of those selected have since been placed with Ubuntu Football Academy in Cape Town. Others were directed to Stars of Africa, led by Farouk Khan, a former Kaizer Chiefs player who has built a reputation as a credible developer of young talent. And now, seven more are heading to Botswana. Each placement represents a child from a village most people have never heard of stepping into a structured professional environment for the first time.
The clinics are facilitated by Coach Ivan Manyaapelo, who doubles as a scout for the foundation. His role is to look past the limitations of geography and circumstance to find the raw talent that exists in communities where it would otherwise remain invisible. The sessions are designed not only to identify ability but to instil the confidence, discipline, and competitive mindset that young players from rural areas often lack — not for want of talent, but for want of opportunity.
Dinaledi’s Operations Manager, Hassan Stoffel, has spoken of the academy’s ambition in terms that align closely with the Majingo Foundation’s own mission. “We have invested in professional coaching, facilities, and holistic player development,” Stoffel has said. “Our goal is clear — we aim to produce talent that can be exported to top clubs and elevate Botswana’s presence in global football.” For the seven players arriving from North West Province later this month, that goal is now directly within reach.
What makes this story worth paying attention to is not just the football. It is the model. Majingo has taken the lessons of his own career — the proximity to greatness, the narrow margins that separate the player who makes it from the one who does not — and converted them into structured opportunity for children who have even further to travel than he did. The foundation is not waiting for professional clubs to come to Madibogo or Setlagole. It is building the bridge from the inside out.
“At Dinaledi, we believe stars are developed through discipline, education, and structured performance,” the academy states in its mission. “We are building more than footballers — we are shaping leaders for the future.” On 28 June, seven young men from a remote corner of the North West Province will walk through those gates. Whether or not they earn a contract, their world will not be quite the same again.
Similar Posts by The Mt Kenya Times:
- Mt Kenya Times ePAPER August 15-16, 2026
- Kenya’s dairy sector at a turning point as quality, growth and farmer welfare take centre stage
- From salary to student loans: New bill targets faster repayment of graduate debts
- The ballot must be mightier than the stone
- Engineer James Kemoni eyes Nyamira Governor’s seat on Jubilee ticket
About the Author
