Abonga was born in Mthatha and completed his schooling in Makhanda in the Eastern Cape. He has a passion for sports and participated in most sporting codes his school and university had to offer, including but not limited to cricket, athletics and rugby. He studied at Rhodes University and moved to Durban once he completed his studies. Furthermore, he spent 10 years as a player for College Rovers and 2 years as its chairperson. Outside of sport, Abonga has worked primarily in the food services business and in 2015 co-founded Sinani Energy, an energy business that focuses on the building of business and commercial solar PV systems. He is a passionate pianist who worships and serves at Olive Tree Church in Durban. Abonga has been married to Dr Khabonina Nkwelo for 6 years.

‘In serving as a member of Sport for Lives, I get to live true to a part of me that is beyond my day-to-day work. I’m yet to find a tool that has had a more profound in impact in my life than sport. In winning, losing, success or failure or in the spaces between those points, no tool has taught me more about my character than sport. I believe in the bridges that we can build that will allow people, from all walks of life, to walk towards each in other, and in that process shape characters in people that will be a representation of the heart God has for His people. To love one another, as He loved us.’