{"id":38595,"date":"2026-07-02T11:34:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T09:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=38595"},"modified":"2026-07-02T11:43:59","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T09:43:59","slug":"sa-minister-hails-bafana-bafana-as-a-team-for-the-future","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/sa-minister-hails-bafana-bafana-as-a-team-for-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"SA Minister hails Bafana Bafana as a team for the future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa&#8217;s (SA) Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie has hailed Bafana Bafana as a team for the future, saying they made the country proud.<\/p>\n<p>He was speaking at OR Tambo airport in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg, where the national soccer team touched down from their World Cup campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Throngs of fans are at the airport to welcome the team, which, for the first time in their four appearances at the global showpiece event, progressed out of the group stages before they were knocked out by co-hosts Canada.<\/p>\n<p>McKenzie heaped praise on the team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBafana Bafana used to be a joke; we used to not talk about Bafana Bafana. We didn\u2019t win against Canada, but it was the farthest we\u2019ve gone as a country, which means we can only go much further after this. Bafana Bafana is a team for the future, look at the age group of Relebohile Mofokeng and Mbekezeli Mbokazi.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;SABC&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":37705,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-38595","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"VMcKenzie heaped praise on the team.","published_date":"","news_description":"McKenzie heaped praise on the team.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38595","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\/38595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38597,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38595\/revisions\/38597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=38595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}