5-7 December 1986: Does Apartheid Sill Exist on South African Trains?

December 11, 12:30 PM, Emissary Community, Constantia, South Africa

I arrived in Cape Town on Sunday, December 7, after a two-day train trip from Botswana.  A couple hours after my train crossed the South African border on Friday, the 5^th, I boarded the overnight train from Mafikeng to Kimberley.  Just as the train was pulling out, I witnessed an act of white kindness to black people.  A black family was rushing down the platform frantically trying to jump on.  They were too slow.  But just after it became appeared they had missed the train (and there wouldn’t be another until the next morning), the engineer brought the big old steam locomotive to a halt.  The white conductor had apparently seen the drama and signaled the engineer to stop.  As soon as the family was aboard, we were off again. 

I had to put on my sun glasses in order to stick my head out the window because of the cinders from the locomotive.  I propped my feet up on the empty seat across from me and popped open a Castle Lager.  Then I pulled out one of the two ciggies I’d bought for 10 cents each from an African on the street in Mafikeng while waiting for this train.  Shit – no matches.  My second class car was empty except for the conductor and three other Afrikaner crewmen.  I was the only white passenger and all the blacks were riding in third class coaches.  I walked down to where the conductor was sitting and enjoying a cigarette.  “Excus, menier.  Could I get a light?”  Oh sure, that was fine.  Later when I was ready for the second fag, I searched for the crew who had wondered down to one of the third class cars.  I received a light and a smile.  After that cigarette and another beer, I swatted the uninvited mozzies buzzing around my compartment.  Then I curled up in my bivy sack on the ample seat to catch some z’s.  Soon, there was a knock on my door.  It was the conductor and he handed me a lighter.  I explained that I had finished my cigs and no need for it.  He insisted that I take it as a gift.  What a nice guy!  I’ve noticed that any friendliness you show towards these old Afrikaners has a way of coming back to you 10 fold.

The “business end” of the Trans-Karoo Express

The following evening, I boarded the Trans-Karoo Express bound for Cape Town.  I had expected to take a local train to Cape Town which should have left that morning.  Instead, I had to sit in Kimberley all day because the local was cancelled.  The Trans-Karoo is now the only daily train from Johannesburg to Cape Town, and when it pulled into the Kimberley station at 5:00 PM, it was packed to the gills.  Then I got an interesting surprise – I had been assigned a seat in a “Multi-racial” 2^nd class car at the back of the train. 

The official word is that there is no more apartheid on trains.  Supposedly, non-whites can now ride in 1^st or 2^nd class if they can afford the price of a ticket.  Well, that certainly hadn’t been my experience.  I had never seen any non-whites in 1^st or 2^nd class during my train journeys in South Africa.  However, on one of my last train trips in South Africa last August, one of my white compartments mates told me he had been asked whether we wanted to sit in a white car or a multi-racial car when had made his reservation in Cape Town.  He told the ticket agent that it made no difference so they had assigned him to a white car.  I wondered why I had never been offered that choice.  Well, since I am a foreigner, maybe they don’t want me mixing with Africans, "Coloureds" (mixed-race), or Indians.  Maybe they also think I would be offended were I assigned to a multi-racial car.  My compartment mate went on to explain that a white can ride in a non-white (“multi-racial”) car but a non-white cannot ride in a white car.  I suppose that’s to “protect” the sensibilities of whites who do want to share a compartment with blacks. 

So, how did I wind up being assigned to a multi-racial / non-white car?  I had made my reservations for this trip at the station in Gaborone.  I hadn’t thought to request a multi-racial car.  Frankly, considering some of the interesting white characters I’ve met on South African trains, it didn’t make all that much difference to me anyway.  But since my reservation came from Botswana, the South African reservations people may have assumed I was a black Motswana.  If so, why did they assign me to a white car on the Mafikeng – Kimberley train?  Oh, I know – I had paid for second class and all the other cars on the train were third class.

As the porter on the Trans-Karoo who was helping me with my bevvy of baggage started putting them into my assigned compartment, one of the coloured guys seated there told the porter they already had six (full capacity in a second class compartment).  The porter went off to find the conductor to find me another seat.  In the meantime, the train pulled out and the other coloured guys took their seats.  I was standing with my stuff in the corridor next to the compartment and made some small talk with them while waiting for the porter to return.

Noticing my obvious non-South African accent, one of the guys asked, “Hey, where are you from?” 

“I’m American but I’m currently teaching in Botswana.”                 

“Oh.  Well, look, there’s only five of us so you’re welcome to join us if you want to.”

“OK, thanks!” I replied, and they helped me find a place for my stuff. 

When they conductor made his way back to us after finding a seat for me, the coloured guys explained that one of their friends was in a seat in another compartment, so there was room for me in this one.  My guess is that there had never been six of them but they told the porter there were because they initially thought I was South African and didn’t want some fucking white guy in their compartment. 

Soon the beer and brandy flowed freely among us.  Yet none of them got smashed and they seemed a bit perturbed by the noisy young blacks in another compartment who were on their way to Cape Town for a cricket match.  My five companions were working class chaps or so they appeared, probably late-20s to early 30s.  They talked Afrikaans, the first language of nearly all South African coloureds, to each other and occasionally broken English to me.  One guy looked like an American black with African facial features and kinky hair but skin that was lighter than the jet black African variety.  Another could have passed for southern European as he had olive skin and no African facial features.  The other three were somewhere in between those two in appearance. 

I quietly went down to the dining car by myself not wanting to bring up a touchy subject if they couldn’t afford dining car prices and not knowing the black/white situation in the diner.  They seemed to be surviving on brandy, Pepsi, and chips.  After dusk when I was back from dinner, they pulled out cans of spaghetti and franks n’ beans.  The lights went out in the car, so I pulled out my backpacker’s headlamp and shined it on the food so they could see to eat their cold rations.  They whacked off fat slices from a loaf of bread, carved out depressions in the slices and loaded the canned stuff into the depressions.  They ate these mélanges like pseudo-sandwiches. 

Later, we all hit the hay about the same time.  Second class compartments have three skinny bunks on each side; a top, middle, and bottom.  With six passengers in a compartment, it’s a bit cramped but I’ve been able to manage on the few occasions when I had to share with five others.  I’m just under six feet tall and barely able to fully stretch out fully on one of these bunks.  You have to be carefully not to sit up completely or you bang your head on the bunk above you or the roof of the car in the top bunk, my preferred accommodation. 

View south, west of the town of Beaufort West.  The Trans-Karoo Express crosses the Karoo, a semi-desert plain with xerophytic vegetation favored by sheep.  The flat-topped hills in the distance are called the Karoo Koppies.  Behind them are the Cape Fold Mountains.    

The next morning, I had breakfast in the dining car.  While I was waiting for a table, two black women came in and also appeared to be waiting for a table.  A coloured waiter came up and said something inaudible to them.  They left and didn’t come back.  Hmmm.  As was the case at dinner the previous night, I noticed that only white people were eating.  It was time to ask polite but pointed questions again.  “Excuse me, menier,” I said to the white waiter as he handed me the check.  “I’m not from your country.  I’m curious.  Are non-white people allowed to eat in here?”

“Oh yes.  They can eat here,” he replied.  Still it seemed a bit curious that none of them were using the dining car.  The food was a bit overpriced but anyone who could afford a second class ticket could probably handle the prices.  I remembered that when I rode the Trans-Karoo back in August, a steward had come through my white car finding out when people wanted to eat and reserving tables for them.  No one had come through my multi-racial car with this offer.  As a result I had to stand for some time waiting for a table.

On the way back to my car after breakfast, I ran into my Greek-looking compartment-mate.  He was the most talkative and friendly of the five so I decided to break some ice about racial matters.  “I just asked the waiter if non-white people are allowed to eat in the dining car, and he said they are,” I commented casually.

“Oh that’s what he’ll tell you, but they make us wait until everyone else has finished eating.  I won’t embarrass myself by trying to get served in there,” he added.

Back in the compartment, the conversation went on from there.  I don’t remember many of the details but there was a lot of stuff about his anger toward white people.  It was reminiscent of conversations I’d had with coloured friends in East London the previous July.  I commented that I found many of the white South Africans to be nice but “tight-asses” who don’t get down, smoke a bowl, use salty words like “fuck”, act wild and crazy, and have my kind of fun. 

He replied that he would be willing to fight for his country but not for this fucking place given the current situation.  He went on to explain that coloured men do not have mandatory military service like white men do.  Another point of interest:  Several years back, the government wanted to create a coloured homeland.  It was to be called “Atlantis” and located in the Western Cape in the dry coastal area north of Cape Town.  They even had grandiose drawings for a planned city.  The idea did not generate much enthusiasm from the coloureds and has since been totally scrapped. 

As my coloured companions got off the train in Bellville one stop from Cape Town, the fellow with the southern European appearance gave me his phone number and suggested we get together to visit some jazz clubs in the area.

 

[April 1, 2023 note:  Unfortunately, I don’t remember the names of these guys.  I intentionally did not write their names in the letter containing this story as I was getting more paranoid after being told that government snoops open mail going overseas.  I never did get together with the fellow who suggested we visit some jazz clubs together.  Too bad – I suspect we were unable to connect by phone.]