Two books remind us of the tragic paths SA has taken
SA today is not what most of us imagined and hoped for when the democratic transition began 30 years ago.
It is more violent, less caring, more corrupt and poorer than we could have imagined. The majority of the population remain trapped in poverty and marginalised from the economy.
Drug addiction, alcohol abuse and violence against women and children is pervasive. Racial tensions are sharp and painful. Inequality largely mirrors the racial divide. Reconciliation has not happened.
There are successes and improvements. The emergence of a sizeable black middle class is one. So is the slow but steady growth of black professionals as leaders in their fields. And, on a macro level, between 1994 and 2011 the number of people living in poverty declined, even though inequality rose.
Unfortunately, according to a 2018 World Bank study this trend has been reversed since 2011, with an increase in the poverty rate by any measure.
But as we compare our 1990 expectations with the harsh world that has taken shape around us it is imperative to reflect on the history that came long before we did. History laid down what modern SA would become and only the most monumental efforts will shift those pathways. Two books, both recently published, remind us of this well.
In The Night Trains
(Jonathan Ball) historian Charles van Onselen tells the story of a single railway line from Mozambique to the gold fields of SA, opened in 1895 to ferry thousands of workers a year to the Rand on the up route, returning with the damaged, the broken, the dead and the mad on the down train.
Built for transporting coal to the coast and mining machinery from the coast to the mines, the line was not designed to transport passengers. Privately run by the mining industry, the night trains — for the first 15 years and at times also beyond —
loaded their human cargo into cattle cars for a terrifying and treacherous trip over the escarpment onto the highveld.
Between 1910 and 1960 about 5-million passengers made this journey.
The role Mozambican labour played in the development of SA capitalism is one of the lesser stories of SA’s remarkable industrial revolution. For much of this period Mozambicans made up the majority of the mining labour force, and because of the system of forced labour in Portuguese colonialism —
known as shibalo —
Mozambican labour played a crucial role in keeping wages low. Low-paid work on mines was a better alternative compared to shibalo.
The roots of the migrant labour system endure today.
Migrancy from traditional labour-sending areas has continued, but so have large, urban informal settlements as rural people seek to gain a foothold in the city.
This is the subject of the second book: Migrant Labour
after Apartheid (HSRC), a collection of academic research edited by Leslie Bank, Dorrit Posel and Francis Wilson.
Wilson, who has been writing about SA social history for even longer than Van Onselen, is the author of the seminal 1972 report
Migrant Labour, which was published by the SA Council of Churches and Christian publishing house Spro-Cas, in the first sympathetic account of the economic rationale and the human cost of the system.