IN PICS | We’ve gone off the rails but we can get back on track

The images that confronted us late last year of mutilated stations and destroyed rail infrastructure seemed like they were taken on a horror movie set or in a decades-old, abandoned town. But they were not: these were stations such as Jeppe and Kliptown in Johannesburg and Langa and Netreg in Cape Town. The scenes were apocalyptic.

Hundreds of thousands of Metrorail's more than 2-million daily passengers had abandoned the trains.

Pontificating politicians seemed unable to protect SA's railway assets from total destruction, and the railways seemed unable to protect their clientele from criminal attacks while using their services.

It was the perfect storm for the rail network: old, failing and destroyed infrastructure, unreliable scheduling, a pandemic and criminal attacks on both clients and assets had led to the once most-reliable public transport network collapsing in a heap of scrap metal and broken bricks.

Some parts of the network will take 10 years to rebuild. We simply do not have the money or the capacity as a country to repair the damage that has been done in the short term.  

The first train service in SA was launched in 1859 in Cape Town. When, on a January morning in 2022 — 163 years later — I arrive on platform 2 at my station in suburban Cape Town at 6:45am,  I am alone. The difference in passenger numbers is shocking. Eight years ago, even three years ago, the trains were packed. Now they are  empty. Some 30 people who used to travel with me from this station before the pandemic have abandoned the service for various reasons.

The train service is the cheapest of all the public transport modes. It moves masses of people and has the most negligible impact on the environment. I have chosen to continue using the train because I believe in a dignified, safe and well run public transport service. Trains top my list of transport modes.

When I arrive on the deserted station platform in the morning, I stand there, with thousands of others across the country, to make a statement that SA's rail commuters have been done an injustice because the government did not play its part in protecting the service.

I stand with the thousands of poor people on train platforms all across the country who have been robbed by criminals and failed by the state, denied access to a safe and affordable train service.

I return to this now-deserted station urging South Africans to reclaim public transport. Please do not abandon it.

When I board the 106 train, it is spotlessly clean. Some seats are vandalised, but offensive graffiti has largely been removed. I do not mind approved artistic graffiti inside and outside the train. I think it makes for great reading.    

At Wynberg station on the Southern Line, there was always a crowd waiting to board the train. They are there no more.

As I look through the window, I wonder where all those workers went? If they still have jobs, how do they travel today?

I always enjoyed seeing the train commuters shouting to the guardsman to open the pressurised doors. To see the crowd stampeding into the already overfull carriage and finding room for late arrivals was part of the experience.

After Wynberg station, the train picks up speed but slows down drastically as it arrives at Kenilworth station. I sometimes think the Kenilworth people might have complained to Metrorail about speeding trains in the morning, and that is why we travel so slowly through their area.

This train ride is always gentle. Books and phones are open. Some talk. Others catch up on sleep. Others look around.  We leave Kenilworth station like we are on a country trip: slowly.

I look at the opening where the window is supposed to be to see if anyone is waving at us like we used to do at Cape Town station. Alas, all I see is a man running to catch the train, but he is too late.

Rondebosch station is deserted. So is Newlands. No-one gets on. No-one.

The middle class's presence in the struggle for a dignified train service is essential. Our new student graduates, our administrative staff and our senior managers need to return to the stations of SA. Unless the middle class joins the fight, only the poor will use this service and the government will ignore their right to dignified public transport.    

Close to the end of my train journey, I am virtually alone in the carriage. I remember my years as a student travelling from Mitchells Plain to the University of the Western Cape/Unibell station and being robbed on the trains. It was scary back then. Very scary. But our family has also been robbed of a wallet on the metro in Paris.    

Public transport is a right. Safe and decent public transport is a value within that right. We need both the right and the value delivered to South African citizens. We need a government that understands that public transport is the great leveller in society. It is where citizens of all cultures, classes and orientations come face to face with each other daily. Every great society has a decent public transport system.

As I look at the vandalised and empty seat opposite me, I see a country at a crossroads. We can either allow others to destroy the rest of the seats, or we can say “not in my name and not on my watch” and work to protect and fill these seats with people. It is up to us.

I enjoy the characters I meet on the train. A dear old lady in the seat across from me last week began to sing funeral hymns aloud. Softly and melodiously, she sang: “Nearer my God to thee.”

I am not sure what to make of that. I was getting scared. Does she know something the rest of us do not know? When we arrived at Woodstock station, she was still going. We were definitely nearer to Cape Town. Not sure about God.

Trains bring people from all walks of life into one mode of transport — and often into one carriage. I have grown up with trains, using the train to university and later to work. Today, 39 years after I started working, I still use the train. During the pandemic, most of my work life was spent working from home. In 2021 my car became my means of transport. This year, as the leader of my business, I am back using the trains.  

In a country with unaffordable motorised transport costs — financing, fuel and maintenance, and the impact on the environment — the rail network should, by many rail miles, be the preferred and best public transport service in the country.  Cars are essentially weapons. They have often been driven angrily. They are instrumental in the production of rage. They push people to want to be first, better or obstructionist.

Trains disarm our aggression. The weapon is removed. You sit next to another human, and you begin a conversation. Alternatively, you read or stare at nothing. There is a calmness in rail travel that is unparalleled. I have had hundreds of conversations with fellow travellers. And I have had weeks of just total silence. The carriage you board every morning is an entry into the SA we live in — seen up close.

Not only is rail about connecting people, it is also about connecting communities.

Urban centres and rural towns are linked by rail lines. Children travel home from boarding schools to their homes.Migrant workers on mines and in cities travel home for the major holidays by train. Or they used to.

The collapse of the rail network has deepened the fragmentation of society. Cars alienate us from each other. Trains place us on the same platform and in the same carriage with each other.

By sitting idly by and pontificating about the destruction of our national transport infrastructure instead of protecting it, the government has failed to secure one of the most critical assets the country needs to build prosperity. 

The preamble to our constitution calls on all of us to help build a country of six words. Our democracy is founded upon respect, safety, justice, inclusivity, equity and prosperity for all.

These six words are supposed to be central to our national, provincial and municipal strategies for growth, and are fundamental to our civic engagements.

However, it seems that the department of transport and the Passenger Rail Agency of SA have abandoned the values embedded in the preamble; they have allowed criminals and syndicates to hollow out our rail service by stripping it not only of its buildings, bridges and rails, but of the very words that our democratic founders have asked us to uphold.

We have stripped bare the rail commuters’ experience of respect, safety, justice, equity, inclusivity and prosperity when they engage the rail services in SA. Train travellers have become hostage to criminal gangs who roam the stations and trains, hostage to stolen train lines and burnt-out train carriages.  

Nevertheless, despite the dire picture we see of the rail network and train service, I implore my fellow South Africans not to abandon public transport.

Let us pitch up in our thousands at destroyed stations and buy tickets and go stand on abandoned platforms and wait for nonexistent trains and demand that the government fulfil its duty to provide a train service.

Let us walk into broken buildings, stand on platforms that are just a heap of bricks, and claim our rights to a respectful, safe, just, equitable, inclusive and prosperous train service for all.

We reclaim the values of our constitution when we say to ourselves, our children and our community:  “Things don't have to be like this.”        

• Davids is Executive Director of The Justice Fund. Edwards’ photographs are on display at the P72 Project Space gallery in Parkview, Johannesburg, until February 24