KarunaNews Story

The idea of a soccer league for older women took shape in the early 2000s while AIDS was quietly tearing through northern South Africa. Former gospel radio DJ Beka Ntsanwisi, troubled by the struggle of many older women raising their orphaned grandchildren, was inspired in 2007 when teenagers taught some older women how to pass and dribble. Soon, players from Vakhegula Vakhegula FC – Grandmothers Grandmothers Football Club – were traveling the world as ambassadors for older women in sports. In 2023, when Ms. Ntsanwisi organized the Grannies International Football Tournament, the Grannies World Cup, teams from a dozen countries descended on Tzaneen, the sleepy farming town where she grew up. When she organized another tournament this past April, it inspired younger women like Pleasure Maapola, who came to cheer on her mother. “You think, ‘If these old ladies can do this, why not me, too?’”