JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Enos Mafokate, South Africa's first Black show jumping champion and veteran equestrian, has died at the age of 80, his family announced on Thursday.
Mafokate broke racial barriers in a sport that was dominated by white riders during South Africa's decades of apartheid. He was widely known as “Kgosi ya Dipere,” a Sesotho language phrase which translates to ”King of Horses.”
“His journey was shaped by several leading figures in South African equestrian sport who recognised his extraordinary ability and, at critical moments, supported him as he challenged the racial barriers of the time,” his family said in statement.
Mafokate started out as a stablehand. He won his first riding competition in 1963 but the country's segregation laws prevented him from taking part in further competitions until 1975.
In 1980, he was the first Black South African man to compete internationally as a show jumper, placing fifth out of 31 riders at the Royal International Horse Show at Wembley.
After apartheid was dismantled in 1991 and the IOC readmitted South Africa to the Olympics, his service was recognized when he went to the 1992 Barcelona Games as a sports ambassador.
“His journey took him from the harsh realities of apartheid South Africa to competing internationally as a showjumper," his family said. “Yet the significance of his life extended far beyond his own achievements in the arena.”
He spent his latter years developing young Black riders in Soweto township through the Soweto Equestrian Centre, a horse riding school he established in 2006. There he trained hundreds of young people in horse riding and animal welfare.
In 2015 at the South Africa sport awards he received a lifetime achievement honor.
See full AP coverage of African sports here
FILE - Enos Mafokate, leads children during the equestrian vaulting practice at the Soweto Equestrian Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, Feb. 11, 2017. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)
FILE - Enos Mafokate speaks to children during an equestrian vaulting practice at the Soweto Equestrian Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, Feb. 11, 2017. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)
FILE - Enos Mafokate embraces his horses at the Soweto Equestrian Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa, March 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Gloria Steinem, the celebrated author and activist who became one of the most visible symbols and potent voices of the U.S. women’s movement and a fierce advocate for feminist causes throughout her life, has died. She was 92.
With her trademark streaked hair parted down the middle and large aviator glasses, Steinem, a co-founder of Ms. Magazine, was a hugely recognizable presence wherever she went. And she went everywhere: Much of her life as an advocate was spent on the road, speaking at college campuses and community centers, at rallies and marches.
She died Wednesday at her home in New York City, according to her and her foundation’s social media pages.
“Gloria’s greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard,” the posts said. “Her words, actions, and example gave people permission to be their truest selves. Gloria lived true to her independent spirit, always with curiosity and a great sense of humor.”
Steinem enjoyed writing and spending time in the community in recent years, the posts said. She also hosted talking circles for hundreds of people in her home.
“You can’t do it on the phone or on the web,” she told The Associated Press in a 2015 interview. “You have to be there with all five senses. It should be obvious that people can’t empathize with each other unless we’re in the same room.”
She began her career as a journalist, notably one who reported, in 1963, on degrading conditions in Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire, an undercover assignment she came to later regret. She credits a meeting six years later, where women spoke out boldly in favor of abortion rights, with changing her career path.
“That speak-out was the beginning of activism for me,” Steinem, who had undergone a secret illegal abortion herself at age 22, told the AP in an email in 2022, reflecting on the reversal of Roe v Wade. “Either our control over our own bodies is equal, regardless of sex or race, or we’re not living in a democracy.”
Though she soon became a known activist, those who watched Steinem denounce discrimination for so many years likely never suspected that she’d had to overcome a deep fear of public speaking. She would have simply stuck to writing, she said, if only editors at the time had been willing to let her write about the women’s movement.
But they weren’t interested, she told the AP in 2015. “So I ended up going out and speaking, which was my nightmare,” she said. “I mean, I was terrified. But I’m grateful, even though I still get scared even now.”
Time hardly slowed Steinem down; well into her 80s she was traveling the globe and speaking out on issues of importance to her. These included everything from genital mutilation to Korean reconciliation, but it was equality for women that took precedence. “Being a feminist means that you see the world as whole instead of half,” she once said. “It shouldn’t need a name, and one day it won’t.”
As the years went on, Steinem’s visibility endured. At 83, she sat in the front row of her first fashion show, guest of designer Prabal Gurung. A few days after her 85th birthday, she was leading a women’s “talking circle” at an off-Broadway play celebrating her life, where one by one, women in the audience — many fighting tears — rose to thank her and tell their own stories of discrimination. In 2020, her life was the subject of a feature film, “The Glorias, A Life on The Road,” based on her 2015 memoir and starring Julianne Moore.
And at 91, she collaborated on a picture book with Liberian peace activist and Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee aimed at inspiring young people to change the world. “Rise, Girl, Rise: Our Sister-Friend Journey. Together for All” was published in February 2026.
The constant visibility came with a price; even into her older years, Steinem expressed frustration that despite her accomplishments, she was often described as beautiful or glamorous (A 1992 Vanity Fair profile even noted her “spectacular racehorse legs.”) It was a label she said unfairly detracted from her message.
“Nobody ever called me beautiful until I was publicly a feminist, and that was in my mid-30s,” she told AP in a 2011 interview. “It was clear that label was being assigned to me. The most hurtful part is that you work very hard, and people say it’s because of your looks.”
Of course, Steinem also had to deal with hostility. Sometimes it came from surprising places. Appearing on Larry King’s talk show on CNN in 1990, she was visibly stunned when a female caller greeted her cheerfully, then told her to “rot in hell” because she had ruined “the beautiful American family.”
But by then, she noted, at least people were taking feminists seriously. That wasn’t the case in 1972 when she co-founded Ms. Magazine and many commentators — especially male — dismissed it as ridiculous, predicting an early demise. (The magazine continues to this day, published by the Feminist Majority Foundation.)
Among Steinem’s detractors was President Richard Nixon, who was caught on an Oval Office tape ridiculing both her and the “Ms.” title. The ridicule was mutual: In a 1972 National Press Club speech, Steinem called Nixon “the most sexually insecure chief of state since Napoleon.”
It was just one example of Steinem’s trademark wit. Before she married at 66, she often explained her singlehood by saying “I can’t mate in captivity.” Laughter, she wrote, was “the only free emotion — the only one that can’t be compelled.”
Gloria Steinem, Journalist and Activist talks during the Forbes 30/50 Summit at the Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, March 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)
FILE - Gloria Steinem speaks during the 2021 Princess of Asturias Awards ceremony in Oviedo, northern Spain, Oct. 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File)
