How Richard Maponya’s racehorses galloped over apartheid

In 1982, at the height of racial oppression and the struggle against it, a horse called Another Colour won a race in Joburg, the jockey resplendent in the yellow, green and black stripe of the banned African National Congress. The crowd – at least the black section of it – was ecstatic.

“They were yelling, yodelling and singing like it was a wedding,” later recalled Mike Azzie, who trained the winner for owner Dr Richard Maponya.

Maponya – who died this week at 99 – was by far the most successful black businessman in the country during the bad old days of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, building an empire of grocery and bottle stores, filling stations and car dealerships in Soweto.

This took monumental perseverance in the face of a government set on blocking black entrepreneurship in line with its deluded idea that townships should be joyless places of temporary sojourn for workers from faraway homelands.

Maponya was friendly with Nelson Mandela, but that might have hindered, not helped, him as a young go-getter: in the 1950s, the security cop-harassed law firm of Tambo & Mandela tried but was unable to help him get the licence needed to open a clothing shop in Soweto.

However, Mandela did procure Maponya a grocery outlet licence, which led to the establishment of Dube Hygienic Dairy and milk delivery in the township via small boys on bicycles. Those small beginnings got the enterprise rolling – and it proved unstoppable.

When horse racing caught the eye of Maponya and his wife Marina they contacted the well-known Azzie racing family with a mind to becoming the first black people in the country to own a runner. Racing was then on the crest of a popularity wave and might have been perceived by the defiant couple as a bastion of white privilege worth storming.

Billionaire Harry Oppenheimer proposed the Maponyas to the SA Jockey Club, but that hidebound body at first grumbled that the couple probably wouldn’t be able to pay their bills and took some time to grant them colours in the hues of the outlawed ANC and PAC.

Then youthful trainer Mike Azzie took Dr Maponya to a horse sale and the pair chuckled as they bought Another Colour, not just for the name but because it looked likely to be a decent competitor. The next horse they purchased was Black Charger.

Years later, Azzie recalled visiting the Maponya home in Dube at a time when white visitors to Soweto went in fear. “I wore a balaclava and gloves, and I had one of my stable hands with me giving directions to the house.”

The Maponyas raced horses for about a decade, their best being With Haste and Shaybani, both in the yard of top Highveld trainer Jean Heming.

In the tumult of political upheaval and change in the country, the Maponyas drifted away from the game.

In recent times, racing has battled to bring similar iconic black figures into the sport, to start the black ownership ball rolling and help boost racing’s black support base. Demographic representation pressures have also been a factor in the post-1994 political set-up.

In 2009, Azzie got a phone call, a familiar chuckle on the line. Richard Maponya, fresh from realising his lifelong dream of building a R650-million mega shopping mall in Soweto, was venturing back into racing.

The trainer got the Maponyas started again and one of their most successful horses has been Angel’s Power, which has done well at Graded-race level.

The family has also patronised other trainers in Joburg, including young Mike Mahiakola, a former apprentice jockey and the only black African currently training in the country.

Mahiakola told Sporting Post newspaper in an interview last year that Maponya was a mentor and like a father and grandfather to him.

“He said he would give me horses and bring other black people into the game if I got my licence, and that was all the commitment I needed at the time.”

Maponya died in the early hours of Monday after a short illness.

The family said funeral arrangements will be announced in due course and asked for privacy during their time of grieving.

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