Steve Komphela credits football and education for rise from farm hardship to Sundowns success

Mamelodi Sundowns assistant coach Steve Komphela says football and education transformed his life, taking him from a childhood of poverty on a farm to the highest levels of African football.

Komphela, who has a teaching qualification, has established a distinguished career in South African football. He progressed from captain and accomplished defender during his playing days to a championship-winning coach and respected member of Sundowns’ technical team.

The former Bafana Bafana international won 24 caps between 1992 and 1995. His playing career included spells with Qwa-Qwa Stars and Kaizer Chiefs, as well as a move to the Turkish Super Lig, where he represented Gaziantepspor and Canakkale Dardanelspor.

In 2015, Komphela led Kaizer Chiefs to the finals of the MTN8 and Telkom Knockout. He later became part of the Sundowns technical team that won the CAF Champions League, four league titles, the Nedbank Cup, the MTN8 and the Carling Knockout.

He has also managed South Africa’s national U-20 and U-23 teams, and took temporary charge of Bafana Bafana as caretaker coach in 2012.

Komphela used a recent reflection on his career to describe the difficult circumstances of his upbringing and the opportunities created by schooling and football.

“I don’t think I would be doing justice if I were not to declare this. For every African child, they need to know this. I was born on a farm, from a family of Mom and Dad who never went to school. And Mom could not even do their own signature, they would do an X,” he said.

He explained that he grew up helping his family as a farm labourer, beginning work before dawn and enduring freezing conditions during the winter.

“I happened to be lucky to go to school. I am that child who also was part of the farm labourer, I would wake up at 03:30, 04:00 to go milk cows. In winter, I would literally sink my feet on the dung of the cow to get warm, whilst you walk on that icy grass.”

Komphela said his present position would not have been possible without the combination of education and football, while also expressing gratitude to Mamelodi Sundowns.

“Now that I’m here, I am grateful, not only to my current employers who are great with me, but to football as well the game has given me so much. Had it not been for football, had it not been for education, that would have gone for nothing. I would still be a 60-year-old who is on a farm with no direction, not knowing where to go, with a very low self-esteem. I’m a better man now thanks to football,” he concluded.