<\/p>\n
The team, led by coach Hugo Broos, has a strong squad with a mix of experienced players and rising stars. The family of Bafana Bafana and Orlando Pirates player, Evidence Makgopa, who is from Ga-Mampa Village outside Burgersfort in Limpopo, have wished the team and Makgopa well in the tournament. Speaking through an interpreter, Makgopa’s parents Thabitha and Chichila Makgopa, say they are proud of his achievement and are backing him and the team.<\/span><\/p>\n \n “I’m very excited as his mother, that Evidence will be playing at the AFCON tournament. I wish him all the best, wherever he’s going, he must play well. Even when he was a young boy, you could tell he was a star. He’s a very humble child who listens to us and directives from his coaches. What I want to say is that God knows everything. I wish him good luck. The most important thing is for him to follow all the instructions given by the coach. I’ve been watching him since he was 8-years-old, and the way he played. Soccer, you could tell he’s got talent,” they said.<\/span><\/p>\n \n –SABC–<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21375,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-21374","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Bafana Bafana have arrived in Morocco for the Africa Cup of Nations, aiming to end their 29-year title drought","published_date":"2025-12-19 00:00:00","news_description":"Bafana Bafana have arrived in Morocco for the Africa Cup of Nations, aiming to end their 29-year title drought","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/21374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/21374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25069,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/21374\/revisions\/25069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=21374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}