Photographs by Karabo Mooki

Enos Mafokate was 16 when a punch in the face changed the course of his life.

It was 1960, and he was delivering milk for a dairy farm north of Johannesburg. It was the height of apartheid, and he knew the rules: He was to call his white employer baas—or boss—and the man’s teenage daughter kleinmiesies—the small madam.

But sometimes, when the boss wasn’t around, he called the girl by her first name. One day, he accidentally did it within earshot of her father. Before Mafokate even saw it coming, his boss’s meaty fist collided with his face. “His one hand was as big as two of mine,” Mafokate remembers.

One of Mafokate’s bright blue eyes swelled shut. While the girl sobbed, her father guiltily loaded him into his pickup truck and took him to a nearby clinic. Mafokate snuck out the back door and never went back to the job.

“If that punch never happened, I wouldn’t be here today,” says Mafokate, 80. He found his next gig caring for horses at a local stable, and from there he became one of South Africa’s first Black professional show jumpers. His decorated career, which included major show jumping victories in South Africa and the United Kingdom, spanned the final two decades of apartheid, a time when seeing a Black man dominate an old money colonial sport had a symbolism that extended far beyond sports.

“He tells us his stories when we need courage,” says Naledi Dlamini, 19, a student at Soweto Equestrian Center, the riding school Mafokate founded in 2007. She has been riding here since she was 8 years old, and like other students of Mafokate’s, she calls him ntate, the term for father in his native Sesotho. “He opened the way for us,” she says.

Enos Mafokate, one of South Africa’s first Black show jumpers, sits in the tack room (a repurposed shipping container) at the equestrian center he founded in the township of Soweto.
Enos Mafokate, one of South Africa’s first Black show jumpers, sits in the tack room (a repurposed shipping container) at the equestrian center he founded in the township of Soweto. Karabo Mooki
Years of riding under Mafokate have paid off for Naledi Segale, who now competes at the national level. She says she hopes her success will inspire other Black women to take up the sport.
Years of riding under Mafokate have paid off for Naledi Segale, who now competes at the national level. She says she hopes her success will inspire other Black women to take up the sport. Karabo Mooki

Hemmed in by a tidy suburb of orange brick houses peeking over concrete fences, Mafokate’s riding school was the first in Soweto, a township of two million people south of Johannesburg. The township was originally built in the 1930s to house the Black laborers needed by the “white” city to the north, and it still bears the scars of its brutal neglect, with far fewer parks and other public spaces for leisure than historically white neighborhoods. In that context, the Soweto Equestrian Center is an unusual escape.

On a recent autumn morning, bass vibrated from an old BMW parked near the riding school, where a group of men were passing around sweating bottles of beer. Inside the school’s fence, meanwhile, about a dozen horses and two squat Shetland ponies grazed in a field as Mafokate gathered a group of students for a riding lesson.

His teaching style is often gruff and direct. “If you make a mistake, it’s over, you’ll see flames,” said Skylar Sultan, 10. But “when he’s proud of you, you feel like you can do anything you want.”

Cover image of the Smithsonian Magazine July/August 2024 issue

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This article is a selection from the July/August 2024 issue of Smithsonian magazine

Mafokate chats with a local BMX rider, who playfully circles him and shows off his stunts, on an afternoon ride through the streets of Soweto.
Mafokate chats with a local BMX rider, who playfully circles him and shows off his stunts, on an afternoon ride through the streets of Soweto. Karabo Mooki
Tshepo Masemola, a trainer at the center, demonstrates a vaulting exercise atop an old oil drum that’s been converted into a makeshift practice horse.
Tshepo Masemola, a trainer at the center, demonstrates a vaulting exercise atop an old oil drum that’s been converted into a makeshift practice horse. Karabo Mooki
Student Karabo Moraka lunges his horse before a lesson. Moraka has ridden at the center for ten years and hopes to one day compete at the national level.
Student Karabo Moraka lunges his horse before a lesson. Moraka has ridden at the center for ten years and hopes to one day compete at the national level. Karabo Mooki

Many of Mafokate’s students cannot afford to pay for their lessons, but he rarely turns anyone away. “There is a saying in Sesotho,” Mafokate told me as a Shetland pony named Strawberry gobbled a carrot from his hand. “‘Whether or not you are leading at the beginning of the race, it doesn’t define how the race will end.’”

Mafokate was born in 1944, in Alexandra, a township about 20 miles north of where his school now sits. For much of his childhood, he lived on a nearby farm, where he rode his family’s donkey, Dapper, to herd cattle.

Sometimes, he was secretly joined by a white boy from the other side of the farm, who shared sandwiches stuffed with pink lunch meat, and who let Mafokate ride his pony. Eventually, he says, they got caught, and Mafokate’s parents warned him to stay away. “If that boy ever falls and gets hurt, you’ll go to jail,” he remembers them saying.

Later, when Mafokate went to work as a stable hand, or groom, it was more of the same. Black grooms were the lifeblood of South African stables, caring for the horses and keeping them fit. But no matter how skilled the grooms were as riders, they were never allowed to compete themselves.

For trainers Masemola, far left, and Clifford Lekgau, presentation and the health of the horse are paramount. Here, they put the finishing touches on Mafokate’s horse before he enters the ring.
For trainers Tshepo Masemola, far left, and Clifford Lekgau, presentation and the health of the horse are paramount. Here, they put the finishing touches on Mafokate’s horse before he enters the ring. Karabo Mooki
Using a rag, Tshiamo Khumalo gives a horse a bath. Regular baths help prevent skin conditions and remove dirt that could cause chafing under the saddle.
Using a rag, Tshiamo Khumalo gives a horse a bath. Regular baths help prevent skin conditions and remove dirt that could cause chafing under the saddle. Karabo Mooki
Trainee Kabelo uses a hoofpick to remove debris from a horse’s hooves.
Trainee Kabelo uses a hoofpick to remove  debris from a horse’s hooves. Karabo Mooki

By the mid-1970s, however, the reins were loosening. Some equestrian clubs and competitions began to allow Black riders, and Mafokate charged in. His early successes drew the attention of a Welsh show jumping champion named David Broome, who saw Mafokate compete at a show in Cape Town in the late 1970s. In 1980, he invited Mafokate to compete in Britain, the first South African to do so in two decades. “We couldn’t see how bad things were [in South Africa] because we grew up with apartheid,” Mafokate remembers of that first trip. But England felt like a parallel universe. Riding was a lily-white sport there, too, but there wasn’t the same kind of ceiling on what was possible for a Black man. When his name was called in competition, tens of thousands of mostly white fans roared in applause. A British rider he knew in South Africa arranged for him to have dinner with members of the royal family, “I’m in another life,” he remembers thinking. “The world is another thing.”

No matter how great his professional success, however, most of apartheid’s rules didn’t bend. Sitting in his office today, he traces a rubbery scar across his left forearm. In 1983, by which time he was already a decorated show jumper, a horse at a farm in Johannesburg kicked Mafokate, slicing his arm deep to the bone. But when a colleague drove him to a clinic, they turned him away because he was Black.

Mafokate says he never wanted his professional struggle, or his accomplishments, turned into a political symbol. He competed at a time when most South African athletes—by choice or by force—were barred from international competitions because of apartheid. “I’m not here for politics, I’m here for the horses,” Mafokate used to say to anyone who asked.

Enos Mafokate proudly wears his South African show jumping jacket on a ride through the streets of Soweto.
Enos Mafokate proudly wears his South African show jumping jacket on a ride through the streets of Soweto. Karabo Mooki
Curious neighborhood children at Mafokate’s riding center.
Curious neighborhood children at Mafokate’s riding center. “He’s put his heart, blood, and sweat into this sport,” says grandson and show jumper Kabelo Mafokate. Karabo Mooki
Skylar Sultan works on her riding position in a lesson.
Skylar Sultan works on her riding position in a lesson. Like many young riders, she loves to jump. It’s exciting, she says. “A feeling you can’t explain.” Karabo Mooki

He largely retired from competition in the late 1980s and worked a series of jobs caring for rescue horses in Soweto as he and his wife raised their seven children. In his free time, he taught riding in whatever patches of open space he could find in the township. One was beside a garbage dump. He nursed a dream of opening a stable of his own. In the mid-2000s, the city of Johannesburg gave him a parcel of soggy grassland. He drained it and brought his herd of misfit rescue horses to stay.

Today, the school has dozens of students from Soweto and across Johannesburg, who learn not only how to ride but also to groom, feed, wash and tack the horses as well. He says he wants his students to develop lasting relationships with the horses in their care and to see them as their teammates and friends.

Masemola’s dedication to the school and the horses, rising at 5 each morning to feed them and turn them out, has earned him the position of head trainer.
Tshepo Masemola’s dedication to the school and the horses, rising at 5 each morning to feed them and turn them out, has earned him the position of head trainer. Karabo Mooki
Skylar Sultan gives a horse a final going-over.
Skylar Sultan gives a horse a final going-over. From the very beginning, students are taught the fundamentals of horse care, from proper handling to grooming and tacking up. Karabo Mooki
One of Mafokate’s aims when he founded the equestrian center was to open up the elite world of riding to people who otherwise would never have a chance to participate in the sport.
One of Mafokate’s aims when he founded the equestrian center was to open up the elite world of riding to people who otherwise would never have a chance to participate in the sport. Karabo Mooki

“Mukhulu says if you fall off the horse, it’s not your fault”—or the horse’s, explained Amogelang Kunene, 10, using another term of respect by which Mafokate is often called. “It’s just a miscommunication.” On a recent Sunday morning, she was among a group of his students who traveled to a suburban stable for an informal show jumping competition. As in Mafokate’s day, nearly all of the other riders were white. But unlike then, no one batted an eye at his students’ presence.

“Jumping is exciting—when you’re in the air you feel like you’re somewhere else,” said Skylar after she finished her event. “It’s a feeling you can’t explain. People who don’t ride horses don’t understand.”

Mafokate says this is what he always wanted—for riding to fling the world open wide for his students.

“I’ve had this thing in my blood since I was a child,” he says. “My purpose is to help a Black child in the township, and to leave something for them.”

Correction, July 8, 2024: This article was updated to correct a misspelling in Naledi Dlamini’s name. Additionally, a caption was updated to correctly identify the subject as Naledi Segale.

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South African photographer Karabo Mooki focuses on bringing under-represented faces to the fore.

Ryan Lenora Brown is a journalist based in Johannesburg.