SOWETO: Twelve-year-old Jabu Shabalala issued an ultimatum to his mother while driving past a group of children on horseback in South Africa’s best-known township and former anti-apartheid hotspot.

“Mummy, I also want to go there,” he said.

Forced to make a quick U-turn, Nomsa Shabalala now factors her son’s horseshows into her weekends but admits that she never thought a white-dominated, elitist sport would be taken up by black South Africans.

“Now it’s coming to the most disadvantaged group,” she said pointing to Jabu in neat jodhpurs and helmet as he steered Mapule, a grey pony whose name means “Rain,” around a small enclosure.

The Soweto Riding School is the brainchild of 63-year-old Enos Mafokate, South Africa’s first black show jumper, who fell in love with the sport as a horse-mad boy hoping for a chance to look after the horses of picnicking whites.

Mafokate eventually got a foot in the door as a stable hand, earning a meagre salary, but his dream was to own his own horses.

“I wasn’t that groom looking to groom,” Mafokate said. “I told people my dream is one day I must have my own horses, I must be able to ride like these white people are riding. And they laughed at me, the other grooms.”

Mafokate now owns 11 ponies and eight horses and is overseeing the construction of a comprehensive equestrian centre in the heart of Soweto where his riding school will relocate from its humble base at a local animal charity.

Since 1988, the riding school has given youngsters first-hand experience of a little-known sport in a country where soccer, rugby and cricket are national obsessions.

“In Soweto, there are not a lot of people who do this sport, it’s a white-dominated sport,” said Amugelang Nombembe, whose friends thought he was joking when he told them that he had started horse riding.

“They thought I was out of my mind,” said the 16-year-old.

Mafokate kept a tight rein on his students as they warmed up in a small arena, barking out instructions as the ponies – many of them former cart animals – made their way towards jumps mounted on well-worn drums.

“There you are!” he exclaimed for a correct jump.

Mafokate began to compete in major horse shows domestically and abroad as apartheid’s heavy-handed restrictions loosened and was part of the development team at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.

But as a black rider he also faced discrimination, such as being told not to enter a members area at one show, being refused service at a shop when travelling to an outside event, and having to call a white owner “boss”.

“It was very difficult,” he said, adding that the support of some fellow white riders had got him to where he is today. “I’ve always been saying that blacks and whites need to work together.”A number of Mafokate’s students have made it into provincial teams and he describes Soweto as being the “cream” of the horse world with more black riders than any other riding school in South Africa.About 50 non-whites were now members of the provincial horse society, he said.

The sport’s novelty in Soweto, where matchbox houses remain a symbol of the white regime’s oppression, was obvious as a group of children watched horses fly over jumps with appreciative “ooohs” and “aaahs”.

Standing near them was Sibusiso Ngxongo, who works in the area. “It’s wonderful. We never used to see this in Soweto,” he said.

Mafokate hopes the Soweto Equestrian Centre, supported by Johannesburg city authorities, the British charity World Horse Welfare and others, will give young riders the chances that he never had.

The school will have stable blocks, a clubhouse and arenas.

The dream was for a black child to participate in a show as a white child could, Mafokate told AFP.

“That’s why my dream today is to open that centre so that even at the time that God takes me, that centre must go on. That centre must be there for thousands of years.”

For children like Jabu Shabalala who carefully groom their ponies after a riding class, Mafokate’s school has let him discover what is now a favourite sport. “I love horses,” he said shyly.

Jabu’s mother Nomsa believes that Mafokate was “answering his calling” by teaching young South Africans to ride.

“He’s one of a kind in Soweto,” she said.—AFP