His career was characterised by great versatility and constant racing, as his situation in apartheid-era South Africa, made international competition in his prime impossible.
[1] This was the start of long and extremely successful athlete-coach relationship which almost immediately bore fruit when Temane won the South African 5000 metres title three months later in Stellenbosch April 1982 in 13:50.02 beating Gibeon Moshaba into second place.
On the latter occasion the race had been preceded by an unprecedented media build up and the nail-biting contest between Temane and rival, Zithulele Sinqe, more than lived up to the pre-race publicity.
Both athletes were credited with a time of 60:11, with Temane the winner by the barest of margins, well under the then world-best of 60:43 of Kenya's Mike Musyoki, who had been a teammate of Matthews Motshwarateu at the University of Texas at El Paso.
He has been a recreation officer at the Oppenheimer stadium at Anglo-Gold Ashanti's Vaal Reefs Gold Mine near Orkney in the North-West province since 1984.
[1] He keeps close contact with many of the leading South African athletes of his generation and in December 2009 he helped locate his namesake and former rival, Matthews Batswadi, who had been living in seclusion for 25 years at his ancestral village of Dithakong, in the North West Province, near Kuruman.