Orlando East, Soweto, 1937. The skull-and-crossbones was never a symbol — it was a declaration. This is how the Buccaneers became Africa’s most mythologised football club.
Orlando Pirates Football Club was founded in 1937 in Orlando East, Soweto, emerging from the Orlando Boys Club. Andries “Pele Pele” Mkhwanazi, a boxing instructor, encouraged the formation of a football team among the area’s young men.
Within a year those teenagers were competing in the Johannesburg Bantu Football Association — the structural beginning of a club that would grow into the continent’s most supported.
The skull-and-crossbones crest was adopted as a declaration, not a design choice. The club’s name, its colours — black and white — and its symbol stated something to Johannesburg: we are here, and we are not going anywhere.
“Ezimnyama” — the black ones. The nicknames accumulated over decades: the Buccaneers, the Sea Robbers, the Ghosts, Happy People. Each one earned.
Orlando Pirates claimed the 1995 CAF Champions League — the gold star on the crest. The first South African club to reach the summit of African club football, they announced Soweto to the continent.
The year after their continental triumph, the Buccaneers won the CAF Super Cup, confirming their status as Africa’s reigning club force.
From the 1971 league title to the PSL era dominance of the early 2000s, the Buccaneers have always returned.
The first of Orlando Pirates’ top-flight league titles. A foundation on which the club’s domestic record would be built over five decades.
The 1994 title arrived in the year South Africa held its first democratic election — the Buccaneers sharing in the era’s historic energy.
In the professional era, Pirates added three more league titles: 2000/01, 2002/03, 2010/11, and 2011/12 — including back-to-back championships. The 2010/11 and 2011/12 seasons each produced domestic trebles.
Beyond the league, the Buccaneers built an unrivalled cup record: 14 MTN8 titles and 10 Nedbank Cup wins, including four consecutive MTN8 victories from 2022 to 2025.
2025/26 Season
Under head coach Abdeslam Ouaddou, Orlando Pirates ended a fourteen-year wait for the Betway Premiership title in 2025/26 — their tenth top-flight championship. They did not stop there: the MTN8 and Carling Knockout completed a historic domestic treble. A club record 21 wins, 69 points, 58 goals scored, 12 conceded.
The title was sealed with a 2–0 victory over Orbit College on 23 May 2026 — 69 points, one ahead of Mamelodi Sundowns, a club-record 21 wins. The first Betway Premiership title in fourteen years.
The Betway Premiership added to the MTN8 and Carling Knockout already won in the 2025/26 campaign. It is the third time in the club’s history that Pirates have achieved the domestic treble — and the most dominant of the three.
Previous trebles: 2010/11 (ABSA Premiership, Nedbank Cup, MTN8) and 2011/12 (ABSA Premiership, Telkom Knockout, MTN8). The 2025/26 edition ended the longest gap between league titles in the club’s history.
Sources: orlandopiratesfc.com (Google-indexed content), Wikipedia — Orlando Pirates F.C., soccerbullet.co.za, thesouthafrican.com. All dates and records are verified against docs/research/live-site-content.md and docs/brand-extraction.md. No dates, names or events have been invented. Where detail is unconfirmed, it has been omitted.