Tshegofatso Mabasa's 2024-25 season carried the kind of contradictions that test a footballer's character: a Premiership title won without him in the building to celebrate it, a World Cup squad announced without his name in it, and a loan move that, at first glance, looked like another step sideways. Yet the 29-year-old striker is heading into the off-season as a free agent not with his tail between his legs, but with a confidence he says has been restored - and a resolve to force his way back into Bafana Bafana reckoning.
Mabasa was shipped out to Stellenbosch FC in January after the arrival of Abdeslam Ouaddou as Orlando Pirates head coach diminished his opportunities at the club. His departure was quiet, but what followed was anything but. He scored four Premiership goals for Stellies, none more celebrated in Buccaneer circles than his strike in a 1-1 draw against Mamelodi Sundowns in April - a result that dented the champions' flagging title defence. It is the kind of irony that South African football occasionally serves up, and something entirely unlike the niche peculiarities you might encounter browsing waterpolo betting markets - here, the drama was pure football, and the ripple effects were very real. Prior to the loan, Mabasa had still contributed for Pirates: five league appearances, a goal, a strike in the MTN8, and two in the CAF Champions League - a tally that, in his own estimation, makes him a worthy champion even if he was watching from the Cape when the Buccaneers ended a 14-year Premiership title drought.
"Yes, I feel like a worthy champion because I feel that I did my part in the first half of the season," Mabasa told ESPN. "Yes, opportunities were few and far between, but whenever I was given the opportunities, I managed to deliver as well. It's not just about the league - it's about the MTN8 and Carling Knockout, which I played a huge part in." He added that even in the final week of the campaign, he remained in contact with the Pirates squad, offering encouragement ahead of their decisive matches.
The Numbers That Demand Attention
Mabasa's case for a Bafana Bafana recall is rooted firmly in output. Over the past three Premiership seasons combined, he has scored 28 goals - a figure he places second only to Mamelodi Sundowns striker Iqraam Rayners, who leads the way with 41. It is a credible argument. Brazilian former Sundowns winger Lucas Ribeiro matched Mabasa's three-season combined tally across just two campaigns, but he has since departed South African football altogether. The landscape of consistent, prolific local strikers is not a crowded one.
"I think if you were to look at stats, Iqraam Rayners would be first in the amount of goals he has scored over the last three seasons and I would be second in that regard as well," Mabasa said. "The consistency for me has been something I would be really proud of - because when I started at Pirates, people would say that I was not consistent." Rayners, notably, was himself left out of the AFCON 2025 squad before being named in the World Cup group, so the national team's striker selection choices have not been without controversy in recent months.
Mabasa's most recent Bafana appearance came under Hugo Broos in a 3-1 win over Ethiopia - a cap that is now close to five years old. He starred at the 2023 COSAFA Cup under Morena Ramoreboli, but that tournament has never been treated as a reliable pathway to the senior squad. His World Cup omission stings, and he has made no effort to disguise it. "Right now, given how things have unfolded over the last couple of months, the only thing that still keeps me motivated would be wanting to get into the national team - and obviously, the love for winning trophies," he said.
Hunt Restores the Smile; A Career Built on Grit
If there is one man Mabasa is leaving Stellenbosch grateful to, it is Gavin Hunt. The veteran coach encouraged the striker to play with freedom, to take more shots, and to rediscover an enjoyment of the game that had quietly eroded through seasons of uncertainty at Pirates. "The amount of confidence; the amount of belief he has in his players - the support he gives his players as well - has been really wonderful," Mabasa said. "It has helped me quite a lot to grow and to be able to improve." It is a notable endorsement of Hunt's man-management, particularly for a player whose confidence had clearly been affected by being deemed a lesser fit for Pirates' high-pressing system than Yanela Mbuthuma and Evidence Makgopa.
Mabasa's journey to this point has required no small amount of resilience. He played through a broken bone in his foot in the build-up to the 2021-22 CAF Confederation Cup final against RS Berkane - a sacrifice few outside the dressing room were aware of. After Pirates lost that final, he fell out of favour and endured loan spells at Sekhukhune United and Moroka Swallows before fighting his way back. He is now the club's second-highest scorer in the Premier Soccer League era, trailing only the legendary Benedict 'Tso' Vilakazi. His history at the club is substantial; his future there, however, is not guaranteed after his contract expired at the end of the season.
Roots, Resilience and a Remarkable Family
Behind the career statistics is a story rooted in an unusually stable foundation. Mabasa grew up in a household where both parents served in the South African National Defence Force - his father as a medical doctor who had studied in Cuba while in exile during the apartheid era, his mother as a nurse. Both have since retired, but the discipline and support they provided Mabasa are, by his own account, central to why he has navigated professional football's pitfalls more successfully than many of his peers.
"It is very different to many footballers but we don't choose in what families we are born. I'm fortunate to be blessed with, honestly, the best parents," he said. His mother's go-to story about him - that the only toy he owned as a child was a football - captures something about the singularity of his drive. He played in the garden wearing cricket pads, powered through childhood asthma and grass allergies to return the next day and do it again. That stubbornness, channelled productively, eventually took him from Grey College in Bloemfontein - a school better known for rugby - to a seven-goal display in an Engen Knockout Challenge match that caught the eye of then-Celtic coaches Ernst Middendorp and Molefi Ntseki, and ultimately to a professional debut at Bloemfontein Celtic in 2014 before the move to his boyhood club, Pirates, five years later.
As a free agent this summer, Mabasa's next destination remains unconfirmed. What is clear is that the hunger has not diminished - and that the Stellenbosch chapter, however it was framed at the time, may yet prove to have been exactly what he needed.
