Station segregation

For three centuries racial segregation had been an integral part of South Africa's social, political and economic life. Taking the politics of race into consideration there was no possibility that any government would have allowed or voted a penny for a racially-mixed station in this country.

The situation changed for the worse in 1948 when the National Party was elected on the apartheid ticket. In an unprecedented move the General Manager of Park Station, William Marshall Clark, who did not support the NP's racial policy, was dismissed by a friend of the family, Paul Sauer, the new Minister of Transport.

From here on, railway management entrenched railway segregation. It did, however, manage to convince the government to subsidise the uneconomic lines leading to new outlying black townships on the premise that 'you put them there, you pay for it'. By the time the NP took control, Johannesburg's new station was well under construction - 'native station' and all.

When the end of apartheid on trains finally came, it was hardly noticed. In October 1986 Railways Regional Manager Bertie Heckroodt predicted in public that the 'Whites Only' boards would one day go up in a bonfire. It is ironic that Heckroodt was the son of the General Manager who displaced William Marshall Clark. Two years later, in June 1988, the notices disappeared from stations and trains in the Cape Peninsula, soon to be followed throughout the whole railway system.

Whereas the photographs taken to market the section of Park Station reserved for black people create the impression that equal amenities had been provided. Can Themba's short story Crepuscle conveys a very different picture.

'The morning township train cruised into Park Station, Johannesburg, and came to a halt in the dark vaults of the subterranean platforms. Already the young of limb and the lithe and lissome had leapt off and dashed for the gate that would let them out. But the rest of us had to wade ponderously in our hundreds along the thickening platforms that gathered the populations disgorged by Naledi, Emdeni, Dube, Orlando, Pimville, Nancefield, Kliptown, Springs, Benoni, Germiston. Great maws that spewed their workership over Johannesburg.

I was in the press that trudged in the crowd on the platforms, slowly, good-humouredly, we were forced like the substance of a toothpaste tube through the little corridor and up the escalator that hoisted us through the outlet into the little space of breath and the teeth of pass-demanding South African Police.'

Ernest Cole, a black photographer, called travelling to Johannesburg 'nightmare rides'.

'Getting to or from Johannesburg by railroad is a nightmare if your are black. Trains are too few, too full, too slow. Some African commuters must leave home as early as 5 am to be sure of reaching their city jobs by 7.30. Some are unable to catch a train back to their black township before 7 at night. These people may never see their homes in daylight, except on holidays. Twice a day, at the morning and evening rush hours, the segregated station platforms are a bizarre sight. At one end, a few white travellers stand about, surrounded by space. At the other, a dense mass of Africans is congregated, crowded and compressed.

No physical barrier separates the black and white zones. At some of the larger stations uniformed police may stand at the boundary and muscle back the crowd. But elsewhere what keeps the blacks from spilling into the white preserve is the unseen power of apartheid.'

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