A ticket to ride again
TRACY Chapman’s catchy lyrics: She’s got her ticket, I think she’s gonna use it …came to mind when we got news that the Chatsworth to Merebank railway line might be chugging again. There is such nostalgia about the trains.
In the euphoria of South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 Fifa World Cup, we both travelled with our children on the Westville, Malvern to Durban railway line, disembarking at the iconic Moses Mabhida Stadium to get a glimpse of the world’s finest footballers.
It was a magical time for South Africans; it was our time to shine on the world stage, 16 years after we became a democratic nation in 1994.
The staging of the Fifa World Cup heralded First-World developments that led to a revamp of ailing apartheid-era infrastructure, originally intended to prioritise the interests of the white minority ruling class. The first major development came via the Gautrain which was built in 2010, linking Johannesburg, Pretoria, Kempton Park and OR Tambo International Airport.
The 80km high-speed commuter link was aimed at providing an innovative public transport system to spur long-term sustainable economic growth.
The Gautrain and the subsequent infrastructure developments in 2010 became a symbol of South Africa’s accelerated economic growth, development and infrastructure delivery, with the emphasis on job creation and providing a better life for all its people.
Then, there was buoyant hope that Gautrain’s success would herald similar infrastructure developments in other parts of the country. A high-speed link connecting Durban, Pietermaritzburg and Johannesburg was in the pipeline, but forgotten after one election or the other.
A mere 13 years later, by 2023, the railways and many other state-owned enterprises have all but collapsed because of rampant corruption, maladministration, ineptitude and creeping ethnic fascism that threatens the cherished ideals of a prosperous, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa that many had hoped for in those joyous years of the Fifa showcase.
By the Covid-19 lockdown of 2021, passenger rail services had stopped altogether following damage to the rail lines, and theft of cables and copper fittings at stations across KwaZulu-Natal.
At most of the stations, including those in Chatsworth, the building infrastructure was destroyed with roofing, railings, and furniture being looted or destroyed under a sinister cloud of non-existent policing. The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) in KZN estimated that the cost of repairing the damage would run into billions.
The sad decline of the railway infrastructure in Durban was disappointing given the illustrious history of the Natal Government Railways.
In January 1859, the Natal Railway Company was formed to build a 3km railway from the harbour at the Point to the north of the Durban Market Square, where the old Durban station is located.
On June 26, 1860, Durban had the distinction of operating the first public steam locomotive in Africa. Five months later, the first shipment of 342 indentured workers arrived on November 16 from Madras, India, to provide their labour in growing the colonial economy of Natal.
In the 100 years that followed, including the overall shipment of 152 184 Indian indentured workers, the colony became economically prosperous, seeing major industrial developments that led to the expansion of the economy we presently enjoy.
By 1895, 550km of railway track had been laid to reach the Transvaal border. In 1896 there were 1 215 indentured workers, 813 free Indians and 963 Africans working for the Natal Government Railways.
The Natal Government Railways was the largest single employer of Indian labour in Natal between 1881 and 1895.
The Protector of Indian Immigrants report of 1886 stated: “I venture to assert that were the Indian element withdrawn from the colony for a single month, the whole fabric of industrial business and domestic comfort would be little short of paralysed!”
The increased population meant that the municipality needed workers to maintain its increasing footprint. Greater numbers of Indian workers were indentured or employed by the Natal Government Railways to meet the demands of a growing railway network. In keeping with the colonial housing policy, this led to the development of barracks for municipal workers, and railway workers in the vicinity of the now Durban Magistrate’s Court on Somtseu Road.
Decades later, the Group Areas Act of 1950 saw the demolition of these barracks and thousands of families relocated to Chatsworth under apartheid forced removals.
Families working in the municipality and the railways were compounded in the magazine and railway barracks.
By 1970, the apartheid government built passenger railway lines to link newly-built Indian, African and coloured townships that acted as labour reservoirs.
The Indian townships of Merebank and Chatsworth were linked by a 12.4km railway line aimed at relieving transport problems for the bourgeoning townships.
The double line meant that trains could travel to and out of Chatsworth, enabling 10 trains to transport as many as 2 200 workers an hour.
Our working-class parents’ generation enjoyed the full benefit of utilising the apartheid-era railway infrastructure.
The elections of May 29 no doubt played a part in the state-owned enterprise that is Prasa, announcing on March 28 the rapid resumption of train services to former disrupted railway lines in Chatsworth.
There was a promise that a shuttle service would be introduced between Merebank and the Chatsglen station as a temporary arrangement, while infrastructure repair works continue on this line.
These repairs signal the cherished hope we had in the euphoria of 2010. This Uhuru may well take time to come to full celebration.
For now, however, commuters don’t have to pay up to four times as much for the cheapest mode of transport in already trying times.
Let’s get tickets to ride again and rebuild the railways that are a lifeline to economies all over the planet.
| Fiat Lux Collection at the