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short, wizened man in an old school tie and a black shirt, Bikitsha is not only the sport’s unofficial historian, he represents a class of older owners who keep the sport alive and kicking. Some are unemployed, some are subsistence farmers and small homesteaders, and some, like Tobiguyna “Dlamini” Nkohla, are Mthatha ambulance drivers.

Dressed in his Sunday best, in a snazzy dress shirt and trousers, Dlamini proudly tells me that no one has ever died in his ambulance; neither has he had an accident on the way to hospital.

Solomon Ngcisa owns a taxi on the Tsolo to Mthatha route, but he is quick to point out that his taxi is driven by someone else. What everyone shares is a common love of horses.

One of Bikitsha’s pupils was a boy called Mpahlana Madiba, who used to take his horses down to the river to drink. Madiba has since grown up and is now one of the sport’s key administrators as head of both the OR Tambo Horseracing Association and the Eastern Cape Traditional Horseracing Association.

He has seen seismic changes since the early 1990s when much of the greater Transkei area was a war zone, with returning migrant workers from the Reef clashing with those who stayed at home over ideology, stock theft, women and land. Such was the violence and the threat of violence between the groups — called loosely the “men in balaclavas” and the “men with shaven heads” — that the Bajodini race once had to be held under police guard.