{"id":84035,"date":"2023-01-16T09:47:47","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T09:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theoutlier.co.za\/?p=84035"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:42:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:42:19","slug":"the-accidental-sportscaster-five-questions-with-hloni-mtimkulu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/2023\/01\/16\/the-accidental-sportscaster-five-questions-with-hloni-mtimkulu\/","title":{"rendered":"Hloni Mtimkulu is all about women’s sports"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Name:<\/strong> Hloni Mtimkulu<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Age:<\/strong> 30-ish\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nationality:<\/strong> South African<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Current job:<\/strong> Sports Reporter at eNCA<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Education: <\/strong>Bachelor of Science degree<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About Hloni<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

eNCA Sports Reporter Hloni Mtimkulu believes that journalism chose her as she got into the field by accident after initially pursuing a degree in science. She cut her teeth in sports journalism on commercial radio station KayaFM and has used her platform over the years to highlight women\u2019s sports. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The daughter of the 2017 Vodacom Journalist of the Year (VJOY) Lifetime Achievement award winner Dr Phil Mtimkulu<\/a>, she was recently recognised as the best sports journalist in the country at the 2022 Vodacom Journalist of the Year Awards, and commended for, \u201cmaking it her daily quest to consistently bring the coverage of particularly women in sport into mainstream media\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she\u2019s not on our screens highlighting the developments taking place in women\u2019s sport, she doubles as the secretary general of the South African Football Journalists Association, which represents the interests of football journalists in South Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We briefly caught up with Mtimkulu to discuss all things women\u2019s sports:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Do you think women\u2019s sports receive enough media attention in South Africa?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A:<\/strong> Not at all. The disparity is glaring. There are many historic factors for this, but it doesn\u2019t make it any less jarring to note the difference. It\u2019s not even just women\u2019s sport that doesn\u2019t receive enough coverage, by the way. Our defaults are skewed to the way things were done before, but we can all be part of creating a new narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What are some of the challenges you face when covering women\u2019s sports stories locally?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A:<\/strong> Women doing sport remains \u201cnot the default\u201d. So, there\u2019s a lot of overcoming and changing of mindsets that has to happen in terms of how we, as a public\/in general, take interest in\/perceive women doing sport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What are some of the highlights that you can think of in your long-standing coverage of women\u2019s sports?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A: <\/strong>Honestly, there are way too many\u2026 The scenes at OR Tambo on July 26, 2022 [After Banyana Banyana had won Wafcon], covering some of the Bok Women\u2019s [the South African national women\u2019s rugby team] preparations for last year\u2019s Rugby World Cup \u2013 the team won five of six Tests in 2022 (before the World Cup), [and] that had never happened before! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just remember how happy those players were, and you have to imagine what kind of situation they\u2019re coming from (as non-professionals) to understand the gravity of the whole thing. But generally, I cover a very wide variety of codes and do a lot of mainstream stuff, so it\u2019s always a bonus when I\u2019m able to do a feature on a team or an athlete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What are some of your aspirations for the future of South African women\u2019s sports?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A:<\/strong> That everyone who is involved would be intentional, in their little corner, about changing things. We do a lot of talking about women\u2019s sport, but things change when we [have to] commit to doing something about a thing (and doing the thing).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: You recently won a national VJOY award in the sports category<\/a>. What does that achievement mean to you?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

My dad was awarded the VJOY Lifetime Achiever Award in 2017 for his contribution to journalism in the 1970s and 1980s, so it\u2019s great to have that in common with him (seeing how he was part-responsible for getting me into reading all those newspapers all those years ago).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t think it would mean that much, but being at both the regional and national awards made me see how much of a big deal the whole thing was: an actual journalism award! Those weeks were such a necessary reminder for me about journalism. I\u2019m a sports person, but I was hearing about all these amazing, interesting, fun, and challenging things that make up other parts (the real parts) of the industry, in the company of some of the country\u2019s best newshounds!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can follow Hloni Mtimkulu on Twitter<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, we profile eNCA sports reporter and award-winning sports journalist, Hloni Mtimkulu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":84036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446,9,1387],"tags":[],"newsletter-post":[],"site":[],"class_list":["post-84035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-sports","category-the-outlier"],"acf":{"big_number":null,"big_number_caption":null,"big_number_link":null,"big_number_background":null,"big_number_text_colour":null,"big_number_icon":null,"big_number_wide":null,"featured_chart":null,"flourish_chart_id":null,"flourish_sub_title":null,"flourish_chart_width":null,"is_newsletter_post":null,"post_style":null,"show_on_front":null,"link_through":null,"chart_url":null,"background_colour":null,"text_colour":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86574,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84035\/revisions\/86574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84035"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter-post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter-post?post=84035"},{"taxonomy":"site","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/site?post=84035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}