Ronwen Williams is aiming to win again against Rwanda at Mbombela Stadium!

Bafana Bafana's captain is very ambitious to win against Rwanda.

Ronwen Williams is aiming to win again against Rwanda at Mbombela Stadium!

For South Africa, the path to the 2026 World Cup leads to a stadium haunted by a ghost of celebrations past. On Tuesday, Bafana Bafana will walk onto the pitch at Mbombela Stadium, a venue that for over a decade has symbolized one of the national team's most painful near-misses. It was here in 2012 that a nation’s joy turned to ashes, believing they had qualified for the AFCON only to have the dream cruelly snatched away.

Now, Captain Ronwen Williams stands ready, not to shy away from that history, but to confront it. In a must-win clash against Rwanda where even victory might not be enough without a favour from Nigeria, Williams sees the strange hand of fate at work. He revealed that the players themselves had pleaded for a different stage, for the roaring support of Gqeberha or Cape Town. Yet, they find themselves back at the scene of an old heartbreak.

“Like I mentioned, I believe in fairy tales,” Williams told the media, “because when they asked us last month, where do we want to play, most of the players said it’s either Port Elizabeth or Cape Town, cause of the support that we got.” The decision to host the match in Mbombela felt inexplicable at first. But for Williams, it has since transformed into a profound opportunity for redemption. “And then, for some weird reason, we just heard that we coming to Mbombela Stadium, and maybe now it’s time to right our wrongs from so many years ago.”

He acknowledges the weight of that memory, a burden the team has carried for years. “People still mention that, and that is something that sits with Bafana Bafana [and] will probably be there forever.”

So, as calculators are readied in the stands and a nation holds its breath, Williams and his squad are prepared to author a new ending. They are driven by a captain’s belief in destiny and a collective desire to change a painful narrative. “So hopefully tomorrow we can rewrite the script, and like I said I believe in fairy tales. Tomorrow we go again,” he declared, hoping that this time, the final dance at Mbombela will be one of untainted, historic joy.