Golf Opens Doors for Eswatini’s Youth Amid Socioeconomic Challenges

Only two miles separate the manicured greens of the Ezulwini Golf & Country Club from the rugged terrain of the rural villages beyond the hill. Yet these two worlds have long existed apart.

At the club, golfers line up their shots on immaculate fairways. In the surrounding community, children practice the same game on uneven patches of land where cattle graze, often using bottle caps as makeshift balls.

One recent morning, instructor Bhekisisa Bhembe watched a student prepare to swing. “Bend your knees a bit,” he advised, gently adjusting the child’s grip on the club.

Why We Wrote This

In the tiny southern African nation of Eswatini, golf represents far more than recreation for many youths; it is a pathway to a different life.

Mr. Bhembe began his journey as a caddie at the country club. Today he is part of a growing effort to broaden access to a sport that has historically been the domain of a wealthy, predominantly white elite.

In this small southern African country, where more than half of young people are unemployed, golf transcends mere pastime.

“I know many people who have stayed home after school, wasting their potential,” says 14‑year‑old Olwethu Bhembe, one of Mr. Bhembe’s students and no relation to his teacher. “I can see the opportunities that golf will unlock for me. It has given me hope.”

Participants, not spectators

Mr. Bhembe’s drive to expand access to the sport is deeply personal.

He was a teenager when, in the early 1990s, he first stepped onto a golf course—not as a player, but as a caddie. At the time, Eswatini faced economic hardship. International firms had set up operations to evade sanctions on neighboring apartheid South Africa. As apartheid collapsed, those companies withdrew, while Eswatini moved toward having the world’s highest HIV prevalence rate.

In Mr. Bhembe’s rural community near Ezulwini, carrying golfers’ bags was one of the few ways a young person could earn an income.

The practice area is an open field.

Yet the wages were so low that for years he worked barefoot because he could not afford sports shoes. Meanwhile, golf was largely played by Eswatini’s tiny white minority, many of whom were South Africans still entrenched in the racial hierarchies of their homeland.

“It was an unspoken understanding that Black people were not allowed to play,” Mr. Bhembe recalls. “Although there was no written rule posted, everyone knew the boundary.”

Still, the game fascinated him. As he and the other caddies walked the course each day, they absorbed strategy and technique.

“We could tell whether a golfer had the right stance or the proper club,” he says. “We understood the game, too.”

Nevertheless, they were barred from playing at the country clubs, Mr. Bhembe explains. In the mid‑1990s he and a group of fellow caddies formed the Swaziland Caddies Foundation (now the Eswatini Caddies Foundation). With support from a prominent human‑rights lawyer and the U.S. ambassador, they negotiated with club management. In 1997 the organization hosted the first golf tournament for caddies and secured the right to play for free on Mondays—the quietest day of the week—on the courses where they worked.

Members of the organization later became some of Eswatini’s first Black professional golfers, igniting a broader movement to widen access to the sport across the country.

Today, Mr. Bhembe is part of a network of initiatives aimed at bringing more young people into golf. Veteran pro golfer Meshack Zwane trains youths nationwide who have limited financial means and no prior golf background. Nobuhle Dlamini—Eswatini’s first female professional golfer and the daughter of caddies‑rights advocate Johannes Dlamini—organizes youth golf tournaments that reserve slots for players from rural communities. These participants, including those who train with Mr. Bhembe, pay a reduced registration fee of 35 emalangeni (about $2).

In a sport once reserved for those who did not look like them, “these children are becoming participants rather than spectators,” Mr. Bhembe observes.

Teeing up the future

For Mr. Bhembe, the ultimate aim of these efforts is not to produce champion golfers but to enable children to envision their futures differently. Roughly half of Swazis under 35 are unemployed, and a 2023 index ranking the quality of life and opportunities for young people worldwide placed Eswatini 155th out of 183 nations. Meanwhile, the country’s absolute monarchy leaves young people with few avenues to voice concerns about governance.

Mr. Bhembe maintains that, regardless of a young player’s skill level, the lessons learned through golf—discipline, confidence, strategic thinking—will shape how they approach life.

Playing golf alongside peers from more affluent communities—and even outperforming them—“boosted my confidence and showed me that I am good enough, too,” says Olwethu, Mr. Bhembe’s student.

Ten‑year‑old Ayetsaba Shiba, who aspires to become a doctor, views golf as a stepping stone toward that ambition.

“I believe golf can help me gain admission to a good college and connect me with the right people,” she says.

For Mr. Bhembe, hearing his students articulate these aspirations reinforces why expanding access to the sport matters.

As he watches his students practice on a recent morning, he gazes over the hillside toward the country club in the distance and reflects on how far he has come. Three decades ago he was carrying players’ bags while secretly falling in love with a game that did not welcome him.

Now, Mr. Bhembe’s students are learning to play out in the open, allowed to dream of a future in the sport—and beyond it. Ezulwini’s fairways remain, in some respects, a separate world. Yet with every tournament and every swing, he knows that the distance between the village and the country club is shrinking a little more.

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