PASSENGER TRAIN APARTHEID DURING THE 1970s AND 1980s BY SUBRY GOVENDER

MAN PUT OFF TRAIN FOR USING WHITE COMPARTMENT IN DURBAN ON AUGUST 17 1978 Researching through my files of the articles that I had written while working for the Durban Daily News during the period from early 1970s and 1980, I found that people of colour were not spared in any way when encountering the indignities of apartheid and colour bar in all areas of their lives. Segregation along colour lines also affected the black passengers when using the trains, which was the only mode of transport for most people in those days. The train compartments were not only segregated along colour lines but the railway stations were also designed in such a way that blacks and whites were separated when boarding trains. For instance at the Durban Central station and other stations around the province, there were bridges for whites only and bridges for “non-whites”. If a black passenger was found using a bridge reserved for whites he was arrested and charged or if a black passenger used a compartment reserved for whites, he was on most occasions thrown off the train. MOST PEOPLE ONLY KNOW OF THE MAHATMA GANDHI INCIDENT IN 1893 Most people only know of the historic incident that took place at Pietermaritzburg railway station in the late 1800s when Mahatma Gandhi was thrown off the first-class compartment reserved for whites. Gandhi refused to vacate his seat and for his steadfastness, he was ignominiously thrown off the train. This incident took place on the night of June 7 1893 while Gandhi was travelling from Durban to Johannesburg. This sort of indignity continued for decades right up to the end of the 1980s.

I covered one incident in August 1978 when a young man who was thrown off a train while travelling from the Berea Road station to his home town of Wyebank. Mr Bala Govender, aged 22 at that time, had purchased a first-class compartment ticket for “non-whites” but he had to use the white compartment after he found that there was no provision for passengers like him. I interviewed Mr Govender, who would now be around 64-years-old, and the story was published under the headline, “Man put off train for using white compartment”, on August 17 1978. Mr Govender told me that he and eight other first-class ticket holders had boarded the train for Wyebank at the Berea Road railway station a little after 4pm. He said there were three first class compartments for whites but none for blacks. He said: “The other black passengers and I got into the white first-class compartment which was practically empty. But no sooner had the train pulled off when a ticket examiner came along and said we had no right to sit in the white first-class compartment. “I tried to explain to the ticket examiner that there was no first-class compartment for blacks but he wouldn’t listen. He asked us to follow him and put us into a small compartment that only had one bench. “I refused to sit on the bench saying that I had paid first-class fare and was not prepared to accept third-class treatment. “The ticket examiner said that if I was not satisfied, I should go into the third class. When I refused, he forced me to get off at the Malvern station, which is quite a distance away from my home station.” I managed to speak to a senior official of the Railways in Durban who apologised for the incident and promised that immediate steps would be taken to avoid similar incidents in the future. The official, a Mr J A Pretorius, told me some confusion had arisen after an unknown person had removed the word “non” from a sign “non-white first class compartment”. He said: “I am sorry that this has happened. The incident would not have taken place if we had an experienced man on the train. In view of the labour shortage we had to use a youngster who had been with us only for a couple of months.”

BLACK TRAIN PASSENGERS TREATED LIKE “DOGS” This was an incident that took place more than three years after I had written an article on April 22 1975 about black commuters from the North Coast who complained that they were treated like “dogs” when using compartments reserved for whites. The commuters made this charge after they found that nothing was done to white passengers who used black first-class compartments. The article was published under the headline: “Whites use black trains claim”. One of the passengers, Mr Philip Francis, of Verulam told me that the white passengers board the first-class black compartments at the Durban Central station when travelling to the North Coast. “The ticket examiners or guards usually ask the white passengers to use the next train but the whites wait until the train is about to move and they then jump in,” Mr Francis told me.

Mr Francis was one of the top footballers in those days who played for the famous Verulam Suburbs Football Club that was owned and managed by Mr Balu Parekh. He worked for the British-owned Guardian Assurance Company in West Street, Durban. “Once they are in, the conductors don’t bother them,” he told me at that time. Another passenger from Verulam, Mr Ismail Mahomedy, told me at that time that whites should not use “black first-class compartments” because “if we use white first-class compartments by mistake we are chased out like dogs”. “They must use their own coaches”, he told me. Mr Mahomedy, who belonged to a prominent family in Verulam, was a leading sports administrator in the town in those days. When I contacted the System Manager’s office in Durban, I was told that they were not aware of whites using black “first-class” compartments. The spokesperson said they would investigate the matter.

BLACKS CANNOT USE WHITE BRIDGE AT DURBAN CENTRAL STATION A year later on May 10 1976, I wrote an article about how black passengers travelling to the North Coast from the Durban Central station were prohibited from using the “whites-only” bridge whenever they were in a hurry to board trains. The article was published under the headline: “Blacks cannot use white bridge – claim”. One of the passengers, Mr Ganesan Moodley, of Ottawa told me that he had started to use the “whites only” bridge after he was told that the Railways would turn a “blind eye” to blacks using the bridge. “But this morning two white policemen asked the passengers to go back to platform 10 and use the ‘non-white’ bridge. “But this caused us a lot of inconvenience because we normally rush to catch another train from platform 3.” Another passenger, Mr Roy Sukdeo, from Verulam told me that most of the trains bound for the North Coast normally leave from platform 10. “This is most inconvenient for us because we have to walk around platforms 6 and 8 to reach platform 10.” I contacted the office of the Natal Systems Manager of the Railways in Durban, Mr J C B Irving, who only a week ago told me that black passengers would not be troubled when using the white bridge to reach platform 10. But he was not available for comment.

The Durban Central station used to be a hive of activity right from the early 1940s to the late 1980s when workers from the North Coast, South Coast and the Pinetown-Pietermaritzburg region used to use the trains to travel to work and for visiting purposes. The apartheid indignities were part of their lives on the trains. But the one feature that may have made up for the indignities was that in those early days the Railway authorities at the Durban Central station used to make their announcements about the arrival and departure of trains not only in the English language but also in IsiZulu, Tamil and Hindi. Ends – subrygovender@gmail.com July 29 2020