{"id":217799,"date":"2025-12-23T10:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T08:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zambia\/africa-afcon-2025-south-africa-make-bright-start-as-zambia-escape-mali-defeat\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T10:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T08:25:10","slug":"africa-afcon-2025-south-africa-make-bright-start-as-zambia-escape-mali-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zambia\/africa-afcon-2025-south-africa-make-bright-start-as-zambia-escape-mali-defeat\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa: Afcon 2025 &#8211; South Africa Make Bright Start As Zambia Escape Mali Defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"17\"><em>At the Grand Stade de Marrakech, Bafana Bafana made a bright start in their Group B opener.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"36\">South Africa began their <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cafonline.com\/afcon2025\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Africa Cup of Nations<\/a><\/strong> (AFCON) Morocco 2025 campaign on a positive note, winning 2-1 against Angola, while Zambia scored deep into stoppage time to force a 1-1 draw against Mali on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"33\">At the Grand Stade de Marrakech, Bafana Bafana made a bright start in their Group B opener. Their early pressure paid off in the 17th minute when Oswin Appollis put South Africa ahead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n  <span style=\"font-size: 110%;\"><br \/>\nFollow&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202512230113.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Zambia\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/zambia\/\">Zambia<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the Grand Stade de Marrakech, Bafana Bafana made a bright start in their Group B opener. South Africa began their Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) Morocco 2025 campaign on a positive note, winning 2-1 against Angola, while Zambia scored deep into stoppage time to force a 1-1 draw against Mali on Monday. At the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":217800,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[825],"tags":[9488,258,256,8791,6531,4329,4637,257,5069,254,7138,4709,881],"class_list":["post-217799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zambia","tag-afcon","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-bright","tag-defeat","tag-escape","tag-mali","tag-news","tag-south","tag-south-africa-today","tag-start","tag-zambia","tag-zambia-news"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}