Rising star Vatiswa Mokhonoana: ‘Motorsport can become part of our heritage’

Black South African culture is not static. Each generation inherits traditions from those before it but also adds something of its own. For 17-year-old South African racing driver Vatiswa Mokhonoana, motorsport deserves a place in that evolving story.

For Vatiswa, Heritage Month is an opportunity to think about what today’s generation will eventually leave behind. She believes culture must have the courage to recognise the legacies young South Africans are building right now in how they choose to live, what they experience, where they spend their time, and what they give their hearts to.

“African cultures have room for things that weren’t necessarily part of our parents’ or grandparents’ everyday lives. More young Black South Africans are racing, engineering, building cars, and creating their own communities in motorsport. What our generation becomes passionate about, like racing, can become part of the story and culture that comes after us.

“Culture grows when things stop feeling unusual and start becoming something people understand, support, and pass on. Motorsport can become part of Black South African culture through the drivers, the families behind them, the communities around the sport, and the kids growing up seeing racing as something that belongs to them too. Ten or twenty years from now, I want people to look at African motorsport and proudly say that this is part of our heritage now.”

Expanding the picture of African culture

Vatiswa wants to celebrate heritage without limiting Black identity to familiar or traditional images only, instead making room for new cultural touchstones that reflect how young Black South Africans live, create, and express themselves today. Young people are building careers and identities through technology and engineering, entrepreneurship, fashion, the arts, and sport, and those experiences inevitably influence how culture develops.

Her space is firmly in motorsport, although it was not part of her upbringing. She discovered it for herself, started karting at 15 and quickly moved into national circuit racing, becoming the first person in her family to pursue the sport.

“Maybe motorsport wasn’t part of my family’s story before me, but it can be after me. That’s what excites me. Something I’m doing now could be completely normal for somebody years from now,” she says.

For Vatiswa, embracing new interests does not make young Black South Africans any less rooted in their culture. “Our heritage is what grounds our identities. But loving racing cars, engineering, or discovering new interests does not suddenly make us any less connected to our heritage or where we come from. Yes, we must protect what the generations before us have built and passed down, but we must also have the confidence to add something of our own.

“Our generation has a responsibility to leave something behind. We should bring our identity, our pride, and where we come from into new spaces, including motorsport, and make those spaces part of our story too. That’s what I want other racers to do with me: carry where we come from into the sport and create something that the next generation can inherit from us.”