A new schools rugby competition is set to give thousands of young players across the Eastern Cape something many of them have never had: a full, structured season.
The Mzwandile Mali Schools Rugby Champions League has launched across 138 under-resourced schools in the province, reaching an estimated 3 000 boys. Instead of relying on a handful of pre-season tournaments, as has been the case for over a decade, participating schools will now play regular zonal fixtures, with coaching support, referees, transport, and equipment provided throughout the season.
The competition is the latest phase of a project led by Lincoln Mali, CEO of Lesaka Technologies and founder of the Lincoln Mali Leadership Foundation. It traces back to 2014, when Mali started a schools rugby tournament in memory of his father, a former player who believed deeply in sport’s power to shape young lives. What began with eight quintile one to three schools has grown steadily: to 60 schools across seven towns last year, and now to 138 schools spread across 14 zones stretching from Gqeberha to Mthatha.
From tournament to league
For years, the project’s biggest limitation wasn’t interest, it was structure. Without an ongoing league, gains made during tournament season tended to evaporate once the season ended, leaving players with no regular fixtures to build on. The Champions League format is designed to fix that, giving schools a genuine season: zonal matches building toward a round of 16 in September, followed by quarterfinals, semi-finals, and a final at the Moko Sports Complex, a venue with deep significance in the province’s black rugby history.
That history runs deep. Eastern Cape rugby dates back more than 130 years, with clubs like the Union Rugby Football Club in Gqeberha (founded 1887) among the country’s oldest black rugby institutions. The sport took a hit during the political upheaval of the 1980s and the years of under-investment that followed, but Mali points to a more recent shift in momentum: young players in townships finding inspiration in Springbok stars like Siya Kolisi, seeing a pathway that finally looked like their own.
A bigger stage
One marker of that shift came in 2024, when a group of players from the programme travelled to the UK through a partnership with SuperSport Schools, taking on Brighton College and Sevenoaks. They beat Sevenoaks outright and were narrowly edged by Brighton College by roughly five points, results that put these previously unscouted players in front of an entirely new audience.
It’s exposure the league is now trying to build into something sustainable at home. Beyond producing professional players, Mali says the goal is to grow the wider rugby ecosystem in these communities (coaches, referees, administrators) alongside academic outcomes; he reports rising matric completion rates among programme participants. The league has also become a meeting point across language and geography, with isiXhosa, Afrikaans, and English-speaking schools competing and building friendships through the format.
Looking ahead, Mali has flagged girls’ rugby and younger age groups as the next priority, arguing that the talent pool among Eastern Cape girls is significant but still largely untapped.
Funding the season
Running a season-long league across 138 schools isn’t cheap: transport, medical support, referees, equipment, and field upgrades all add up. A public crowdfunding campaign on BackaBuddy, organised with businessman Justinus Adriaanse, has so far raised more than R750 000 toward a R1 million target, with individual donations reaching as high as R50 000.
For many of the schools involved, the basics (proper boots, balls, even functioning fields) have long been out of reach. The Champions League is an attempt to close that gap and give Eastern Cape township rugby the consistent foundation it has been missing.
This article draws on original reporting by Justine Lebaka for News24 (“138 schools, 3 000 boys: How a new Champions League is reviving Eastern Cape township rugby,” 7 May).
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