Mozambican Labour Regimes and the Eastern Main Line

The South African mining industry profited from the slave- and forced-labour regimes that preceded it in the adjacent Portuguese colony of Mozambique. Many of the earliest migrants were part of a labour force ‘recruited’ through coercion. Black Mozambicans later preferred to work as cheap, indentured migrant labourers rather than face working for no or low wages in their own country. The chapter explains how this helped underpin the illusion that black labour was somehow free, mobile and voluntary. But as southern Mozambique became progressively more underdeveloped economically, the need to coerce black labour became less necessary and the system was said to be operating on a wholly voluntary basis as part of an economy dominated by ‘market forces’.

Conclusion

Black Mozambicans consistently resisted the oppressive labour regime that used steam locomotives and the rail network to deliver them as indentured labourers to the South African mining industry. Some used the system to transport them to the best labour markets and then deserted to find other, better employment. The railways formed an integral part of a highly coercive system of industrial exploitation and, in that, differed from other historical situations where transport systems were used to further genocidal agendas. Yet, so deeply traumatic were the rail journeys to and from the mines that they became incorporated into the modern witchcraft beliefs of Africans which speak of trains without tracks and the recruitment of workers for forced labour in a zombie workforce. The scarring caused by the Night Trains is still with us, whether in songs, such as Stimela, or in witchcraft beliefs that reflect death through over-work at sub-subsistence wages.

Masculinity and Madness

Black workers, intent on maintaining a masculine identity, were housed in mine ‘compounds’ which, in terms of design and layout and the number of workers they accommodated, were more akin to prisons than mass male working-class housing. Sexual behaviour there often had more in common with that found in prisons than among the general working population. Underground, miners were exposed to the dreaded—often fatal—lung-lacerating disease of silicosis that led to other illnesses such as pneumonia or tuberculosis. Extreme mental and physical conditions contributed to the excessive use of alcohol and cannabis by miners which, in turn, contributed to mental illness. The ‘down’ trains, as the chapter explains, were provided with a special compartment for transporting mentally disturbed miners home.

The Changing Economic Logic of the Eastern Main Line

The Eastern Main Line was conceived of, and meant to serve, white South African farmers, at a time when the Highveld was dominated by an agricultural economy. But when gold was discovered, the logic behind the railway system switched to serving an industrialising rather than an agricultural economy. This meant that the railway was never designed, or subsequently operated, as a system that catered for passengers, let alone African migrant mine workers. The chapter explains how discomfort and hardship were intrinsic to the system.

The Down Passage

This chapter explores how the ‘down’ trains carried large numbers of the walking wounded, the terminally ill, the maimed and the weak, as well as ‘healthy’ migrants with cash savings who were being repatriated to Mozambique. The down train had ‘hospital coaches’ but no doctors or, for many decades, trained medical orderlies. On occasion, the corpses of migrants were robbed of their wages. The bodies of those who died on the journey home were taken off the train and subjected to post-mortems with body parts sometimes removed for the purpose of medical research.

The Eastern Main Line

The psychological and social hardship experienced by African migrant miners on trains in southern Africa left a deep cultural imprint. This chapter explains how classic African musical renditions—now largely shorn of their historical context—in songs such as Shosholoza and Hugh Masekela’s Stimela, present poignant reminders of the systemic exploitation of black labour in the South African mining industry.

Running the South African Gauntlet

Unlike the ‘up’ train, the ‘down’ train to the Sul do Save carried African migrant workers with cash in the form of savings, wages or compensation for injuries sustained in the mines. The mood of many on the train going home was significantly more buoyant than that on the ‘up’ train, even though the returning migrants were often short of sufficient food and drink for the long journey. Passengers with cash savings were subjected to theft at stations or on the train itself. Returning miners also suffered other forms of institutionalised harassment by black and white South Africans preying on ‘foreign’ migrants when the train made enforced and unnecessarily prolonged stops at stations on the way home in order to sell workers refreshments.

WNLA Train Disasters

In colonial dispensations, the transport of passengers separated by colour and class reflected the racist hierarchy within the larger society. Moreover, drivers designated to operate various types of trains were allocated duties in ways that reflected their experience and skills. White passenger trains got priority over those carrying black migrant workers. Under such circumstances, rail ‘accidents’—disasters—cannot be fully separated from the way that racism informed the operation of the system. The chapter examines two disasters, one in 1918 and the other in 1949, which show how the analysis of ‘accidents’ cannot be divorced from the underlying racist structures that shaped the transport system in the colonial society.

Afterword

In the afterword, the author offers a personal account of how, when and where he, as a schoolboy, first became aware of the plight of African migrant mineworkers and how the experience followed him into young adulthood. It offers an understanding of why he came to write the book about the Night Trains.

Colonial Managerial Ideologies

Industrial capitalism everywhere tends to commodify labour as simply one more factor in production. In colonial situations, that process is exacerbated by racism. In such circumstances a paradox arose, the chapter explains. The mine owners wanted labour to be moved efficiently and swiftly in a drive for productivity, but the managers of the rail system saw African workers as mere commodities—as freight—which slowed down transport and reduced the efficiency of the system. The latter process can be tracked through the changing terminology applied to black migrant workers who, in reality, were passengers and not ‘human freight’.