Friday, 18 July 1986 – Riding the Rails with My Railway Police “Protectors”

After a heavy evening of partying with Lester and his coloured and Indian friends in East London’s Buffalo Flats neighborhood, Lester and I spend the night in the children’s bedroom (but not in the same bed!) while the kids sleep with Belinda in the master bedroom.  Unfortunately, it’s a work day, so Lester has to leave early.  Around 11, he sends one of his employees over to drive me to the train station.  In the meantime, Belinda has fed me a nice breakfast in between cleaning and dealing with the kids.

The overnight train to Port Elizabeth leaves at noon.  For the first hour and a half the train covers the same ground as my Monday train from Johannesburg to East London.  Thus, I try catching up on my writing instead of taking photos. 

Just after leaving the Mdantsane station, the train stops unexpectedly.  I look out the window and see a piece of equipment that looks like a jack between the tracks and underneath my carriage.  Apparently the engineer saw it and stopped the train.  A bunch of railway guys are out there looking at it.  One is phoning from a call box next to a signal.  I don’t what the big deal is, but how did the thing get there? 

I decide to move back to the next passenger car.  If the railway guys are so concerned about the fucking jack (or whatever it is) between the tracks, maybe I should be too.  If it’s packed with explosives, and they set it off trying to move it, I’d rather not be sitting on top of it. 

At last, the train is moving again.  There was no explosion.  God, we’re stopping at every little wide place in the tracks to pick up and drop off black people up in third class.  The route is a circuitous one through the Ciskei homeland.  During the afternoon, I am able to shoot a number of photos of the rolling, rural Ciskei landscape while leaning out the coach windows.  When the stops, I’m able to get a few people-pix with my telephoto.  The photo activity stops at Alice (not to be confused with Alicedale another 150 kms or so down the line) at dusk.  I wolf down some junk food that I picked up at a carry-away in East London (there’s no dining car or snack bar on this train) and think about opening the quart of Lion Lager I’ve brought along before catching some z’s.  

Some arid, monotonous landscape from my train window as we round a big curve near Lower Regu, Ciskei on the afternoon of July 18, 1986.

 

The white second class car I’m riding in is less than ½ full which enables me to have my own compartment.  Just as well as I’ve gotten peopled-out after four days in East London and will have to face more Rotarians in Grahamstown.  A couple compartments down from me are three loud, obnoxious guys in their 20s.  On my way to the loo, I meet one of them in the passageway.  He says they are on their way up to “the Border” (the Namibia/Angola border) to protect me.  On my way back, I speak briefly with an old Afrikaner lady who is in the compartment next to the three “protectors”.  She shakes her head saying she can’t take it anymore.  “Take what anymore, mevrou?” I ask.  “The foul language from the next compartment,” she replies.  I decide I must talk to this terrible trio in the hope of getting some good writing material. 

I manage to engage one of them, Mike, in a conversation out in the passageway.  He’s a big gorilla type.  After learning I’m an American, Mike promptly gets into politics and sets me straight on the Republic of South Africa (RSA):  The ANC and SWAPO are buggering up the country, he says.  I point out that Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagan are about the only friends South Africa has left.  What happens when they leave office?  He says the RSA doesn’t need friends.  They have the strongest conventional army in the world.  Anyone who attacked South Africa would get their ass kicked.  I politely argue that the blacks could shut down the country in two weeks if they suddenly all went on strike.  Mike replies that they don’t need black labor.  He goes on to recite the usual litany of “the rest of the world doesn’t understand us,” etc., etc.

Mike asks if I’ve got any booze.  I bring the quart of Lion into his compartment and meet the two other ape-men.  There’s Franz:  dark-haired, medium build, around 30 and a 20ish, blond, muscular but chubby brute who keeps mumbling things to me in Afrikaans.  “I’ll be honest with you, Will…” is Mike’s favorite expression.  Maybe he thinks he’s being honest, but my B.S. meter is going bananas.  For example:  “There is no more apartheid.”  I don’t try to argue with them but wonder about group areas, segregated government schools, the vote, and all the “net blankes” (whites only) signs I keep seeing.  Another example:  “The rest of the world practices apartheid.  They just don’t give it a name.  The rest of the world doesn’t understand what apartheid is.”

Turns out these guys are railway policemen (out of uniform).  Mike’s been to the border before.   This is the first trip for the Afrikaner brute.  They insist we drink toasts to South Africa and America.  I try to feign enthusiasm as our glasses click.

The brute asks why I take photos of kaffirs.  I explain that I take photos of landscapes, and blacks are part of the landscape, particularly in the Ciskei.  They say kaffirs are bad, and people who take photos of them are bad as well.  “Why is it bad to take photos of the local people?” I ask.  They claim that foreign photographers take pictures of blacks napping on the grass at lunch.  Then the photos appear in the foreign press claiming that the blacks were killed by the police.  Mike says the police have photos of the foreign press paying black kids to burn down a school so they can film it. “So why not make these photos public?” I inquire.  “That would be highly unethical journalism and the public should know that the foreign press is doing it.”  Mike dodges my question.

Boys playing in the Ciskei “homeland” in the late afternoon.  “Kaffirs are bad, and people who take photos of them are bad as well.”   

 

One of my ape-companions comments that coloureds are great cocksuckers because they are often missing their upper front teeth.  I start feeling slightly nauseous at the thought of a toothless guy fellating my male appendage. 

The guys share the remains of their wine with me but soon run out.  Seems they didn’t bring much because their wives, families, etc. were with them until they got on the train.  Mike and Franz head down to third class to see if they can score some booze from the blacks.  In their absence, I manage to maintain a conversation with the brute about guns, target shooting, pool, and snooker.  I also find excuses to go back to my compartment a couple of times, being slightly paranoid that the other two might be going through my stuff to see if I am a commie spy. 

Mike and Franz come back 10-15 minutes later with the black bedding porter.  They close the door and the porter pulls out a bottle of cheap wine from inside his jacket.  “Shhhh,” he says.  The negotiate the price – R5.00 – a large black market mark-up to be sure.  This rot-gut would go for less than two bills in a bottle store.   They joke with the porter as if he were one of the guys.  I think it’s funny that these railway policemen are dealing black market booze on a train.  I keep such opinions to myself.  These three could make mincemeat out of me if I got them angry.

We finish off the bottle of cheap wine in short order.  At the next long stop, Mike yells, “Hey kaffir, come here!” to a black bloke on the platform.  He tries to have the guy score us some more sauce but to no avail.  By this point, I’m half-pissed on all the beer and cheap wine and getting obnoxious myself.  I tell Mike he should ask the black dude if he can find us some quick fluff to share.  The apes get slightly serious:  “No, no.  We don’t like black pussy.”  “What about coloured girls?” I ask.  They don’t like that either and explain that Afrikaner girls are the best fucks.   You meet them in church.  The brute keeps sticking out and wiggling his tongue at me while talking about the joys of cunnilingus in far less than eloquent language.

Mike and the brute are single. Franz pulls out pix of his wife and two kids to show me.  A cute family.  I can see he’s got a human side.  I pass around some snaps from Colorado.  Franz wants to have one of the shots of Colorado’s Eisenhower Tunnel.  I give it to him but he also wants to trade his imitation Swiss Army knife for my real one.  I refuse but he’s really pushy. 

Even these guys don’t like the AWB (the South African neo-Nazi party).  They say the AWB wants to kill kaffirs, but South African whites have to live with them.  Still, when I contrast these three guys with my coloured and Indian friends from last night, it’s hard to see how the country can ever heal its wounds.  There’s no changing the minds of ape men like this bunch.  I suppose we have similar gaps between people in the States but I keep remembering that I haven’t even talked to people on the far right or the far left yet.

I’ve had enough of the shallow conversation with these guys and beg off telling them I have to change trains in the middle of the night at Alicedale in order to get to Grahamstown.  When I do get off the Port Elizabeth train at Alicedale and walk over to the waiting Grahamstown train, I see that it is pulled by a cute steam loco.