But three decades on, it remains their only success. Bafana Bafana’s fortunes declined slowly at first, then hastened to the point where they were barely considered outsiders for the biannual continental crown.
There is a new optimism around the team, though, buoyed by a third place at the last finals in Ivory Coast two years ago, and by qualification for the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Belgian coach Hugo Broos, who will leave his post after the global finals, has found the right mix of young and experienced players, and they go into the 2025 AFCON finals in Morocco with some optimism that they will be among the title contenders, probably for the first time in 20 years.
But why has it taken this long for a country with a strong football culture, a good domestic league and facilities, and players with undoubted talent, to be among the leading teams on the continent again?
As FNB Stadium swayed in jubilation at the 2-0 win over Tunisia in the 1996 final and beaming president Nelson Mandela handed the trophy to captain Neil Tovey, it seemed improbable that the most coveted national team competition in Africa would elude Bafana from then on.
The story of the team’s thrilling run to the trophy under coach Clive Barker has been told so often that it appears to bore even those who were on the pitch that February day.
“I wish we could win the trophy again, so we can stop talking about the Class of 1996,” many have said. But the fact that a repeat seems so far off now is the reason the legend grows with each passing year.
Bafana Bafana's decline
Bafana’s decline is easily plotted. After their victory in 1996, they finished runners-up two years later, then third in 2000 with a quarterfinal exit in 2002. They bombed in the group stages between 2004 and 2008, before failing to qualify in 2010 and 2012.
As hosts, they qualified in 2013 and bowed out in the quarterfinals. Bafana returned in 2015, but were well-beaten in the first round, taking a single point from a possible nine.
The team benefitted when the finals field expanded to 24 teams in 2019 and, to their credit, shocked hosts Egypt in the second round. But ultimately, they lost three of their five games and stumbled their way through the tournament.
They did not qualify for the 2021 finals, which heralded the arrival of Broos, and then managed that third place two years later.
For Tovey – who was also later technical director for the South African Football Association (SAFA), and so is perfectly placed to understand the challenges of the country’s football – it comes down to personnel and mentality.
“When that (1996) side needed to dig deep, we were very intense in our thought and our process,” he told Flashscore. “Since then, there have been some very good teams with some very good players. But I think, mentally, we were all like captains on the field.
“We all knew our responsibilities, and we didn’t have to look to the (coach on the) bench. When things went a little awry on the pitch, we could take care of it and identify problems a lot quicker than teams can now. There hasn’t been that leadership on the field in the subsequent teams, to be honest. It’s as simple as that.”
Playing abroad builds experience
That on-field know-how was in part driven by a number of players having featured in top global leagues.
Defender Lucas Radebe and striker Phil Masinga were at Leeds United in England, and Eric Tinkler was in Portugal with Vitoria Setubal. The highly influential John “Shoes” Moshoeu was in the fourth year of his stay in Turkey and at Kocaelispor at the time.
Doctor Khumalo was fresh from a spell in Argentina with Ferro Carril Oeste, while the two-goal hero in the final, Mark Williams, spent some time in Belgium but had moved to English side Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Those experiences improved them as players and hardened their mental resolve. They were playing in challenging leagues then for international players to excel in, especially Africans.
Burnley striker Lyle Foster is the only South African currently featuring in a top-five European league.
Tinkler echoes Tovey in saying leadership is a factor, but adds that there is another major difference between the Bafana players of then and now.
“In the years leading up to 1996, our domestic league was basically semi-professional. Guys had jobs in the day and then went to training in the evening. If you wanted to make it as a professional, the only chance you had was to go abroad, and that meant you had to work unbelievably hard,” says the former midfielder, now successful coach in the domestic league.
“That hunger, that desire to go overseas … it is now not the same as it was for our generation. I see it. For many players, it is just about the money. And they are well paid in the PSL, so where is their motivation to really push themselves to the next level in their careers?
“Money comes before performance these days. For us, it was the other way around. We really needed to perform to start earning anything decent from the game and to start making a living from it. That drove a lot of us.”
It sounds like an easy fix. Just improve the attitude. But there is a more overarching reason for Bafana’s drop down the pecking order that is much more difficult, maybe impossible, to counter.
South Africa have little diaspora to tap into
The extensive diaspora of many African nations creates a pipeline for players who dramatically improve their national teams. These players come through academy systems in France, the Netherlands, England and Spain, and many are playing first-team football in rigorous competitions by the time they are 18.
They get 11 years of world-class development under their belts and are finely tuned athletes with the ability and knowledge of how to succeed as a professional, making them ripe for the international stage at an early age.
Riyad Mahrez (Algeria), Alex Iwobi (Nigeria), Kalidou Koulibaly (Senegal) and Achraf Hakimi (Morocco) are a few prominent examples, but the past two decades of African football are littered with hundreds of others.
These nations, particularly in North and West Africa, are benefitting from having their grassroots development done for them at an exceptional, world-class standard.
Of the 23 Algerian players who won the Cup of Nations in 2019, 12 came from clubs in one of Europe’s top five leagues, and another four were regulars for teams in Portugal and Turkey.
For South Africa, development must largely be done at home, often haphazardly and almost always under-resourced.
But even that is changing, with victory in the 2025 Under-20 Africa Cup of Nations finals in Egypt that shows the next generation is competitive on the continental stage.
South Africa open their Group B campaign against Angola on Monday. They also have Egypt and Zimbabwe in their pool.