Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Railing Against Apartheid: Staffrider, Township Trains, and Racialised Mobility in South Africa

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Mobilities, Literature, Culture

Part of the book series: Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture ((SMLC))

Abstract

South Africa has a complex history of racialized mobility politics. This chapter explores the commuter railways that were key in materialising South Africa’s racially segregated cities under apartheid. The everyday commuting mobilities on the township trains were a key site of regulation and resistance to the racial politics of the nation. Focusing on a range of short stories published in Staffrider, including Mango Tshabangu (‘Thoughts in a Train’), Miriam Tlali (‘Fud-u-u-a’), Michael Siluma (‘Naledi Train’), and Brian Setuke (‘Dumani’), this chapter explores how the symbol of the township train, the railway station, the train compartment, and the mobile figures of the commuter and the staffrider were mobilized in the South African cultural imagination as a form of resistance to the racialized mobility politics of the nation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Aguiar, Marian. 2011. Tracking Modernity: India’s Railway and the Culture of Mobility. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aldred, Rachel. 2014. “The Commute.” In The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities, edited by Peter Adey, David Bissell, Kevin Hannam, Peter Merriman, and Mimi Sheller, 450–459. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alvarez, David. 1996. “Train-Congregants and Train-Friends: Representations of Railway Culture and Everyday Forms of Resistance in Two South African Texts.” Alternation 3 (2): 102–129.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnard, Rita. 2007. Apartheid and Beyond: South African Writers and the Politics of Place. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beaumont, Matthew. 2007. “Railway Mania: The Train Compartment as the Scene of a Crime.” In The Railway and Modernity: Time, Space, and the Machine Ensemble, edited by Matthew Beaumont and Michael J. Freeman, 125–153. Oxford: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Christopher, A. J. 1994. The Atlas of Changing South Africa. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins English Dictionary. 1999. London: HarperCollins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. 2012. Theory from the South: Or, How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act No 108 of 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cresswell, Tim. 2006. On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cresswell, Tim. 2010. “Towards a Politics of Mobility.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28: 17–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davenport, T. R. H., and Christopher Saunders. 2000. South Africa: A Modern History, 5th ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Clarence Baldwin, Kenneth E. Wilburn, and Ronald Edward Robinson, eds. 1991. Railway Imperialism. New York: Greenwood Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Debord, Guy. 2006. “Situationist Theses on Traffic.” In Situationist International Anthology, edited by Ken Knabb, 56–58. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Despotopoulou, Anna. 2015. Women and the Railway, 1850–1915. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dubow, Saul. 2014. Apartheid, 1948–1994. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edensor, Tim. 2011. “Commuter: Mobility, Rhythm and Commuting.” In Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects, edited by Tim Cresswell and Peter Merriman, 189–203. Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Editorial. 1978. “About Staffrider.” Staffrider 1 (1): 1.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fanon, Frantz. 2001. The Wretched of the Earth. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Original edition, 1965. Reprint, Penguin Classics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fanon, Frantz. 2008. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto.

    Google Scholar 

  • Floyd, T. B. 1960. Town Planning in South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foster, Jeremy. 2008. Washed with the Sun: Landscape and the Making of White South Africa. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fraser, Benjamin, and Stephen D. Spalding, eds. 2012. Trains, Culture and Mobility: Riding the Rails. Plymouth: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freuh, Jamie. 2003. Political Identity and Social Change: The Remaking of the South African Social Order. New York: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gqola, Pumla Dineo. 2001a. “Contradictory Locations: Blackwomen and the Discourse of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in South Africa.” Meridians 2 (1): 130–152.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gqola, Pumla Dineo. 2001b. “In Search of Female s/Staffriders: Authority, Gender and Audience, 1978–1982.” Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa 13 (2): 31–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guelke, Adrian. 2005. Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gunne, Sorcha. 2014. Space, Place, and Gendered Violence in South African Writing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gwala, Mafika. 1979. “Staffrider Workshop.” Staffrider 2 (3): 55–58.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harber, Jesse. 2018. “One Hundred Years of Movement Control: Labour (Im)Mobility and the South African Political Economy.” In Urban Mobilities in the Global South, edited by Tanu Priya Uteng and Karen Lucas, 155–172. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, F. 1952. “Planning the New Railway Station at Johannesburg.” The South African Institution of Civil Engineers 2: 167–182.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, Megan. 2013. “Moving.” In Categories of Persons: Rethinking Ourselves and Others, edited by Megan Jones and Jacob Dlamini, 38–51. Johannesburg: Picador Africa.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, Megan. 2016. “The Train as Motif in Soweto Poetry.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 53 (1): 21–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan, Caren. 2003. “Transporting the Subject: Technologies of Mobility and Location in an Era of Globalization.” In Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration, edited by Sara Ahmed, Claudia Castañeda, Anne-Marie Fortier, and Mimi Sheller, 207–223. Oxford: Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kiernan, J. P. 1977. “Public Transport and Private Risk: Zionism and the Black Commuter in South Africa.” Journal of Anthropological Research 33 (2): 214–226.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kirkwood, Mike. 1980. “Staffrider: An Informal Discussion.” English in Africa 7 (2): 22–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klintworth, P. J. W. 1975. “The Johannesburg Railway Station.” Die Siviele Ingenieur in Suid-Afrika 17 (12): 324–325.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kruger, Loren. 2013. Imagining the Edgy City: Writing, Performing and Building Johannesburg. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Lefebvre, Henri. 1971. Everyday Life in the Modern World, translated by Sacha Rabinovitch. London: Harper & Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lefebvre, Henri. 2003. “Preface to the New Edition: The Production of Space.” In Henri Lefebvre: Key Writings, edited by Stuart Elder, Elizabeth Lebas, and Eleanore Kofman, 206–213. London: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • MADEYOULOOK, and Santu Mofokeng. 2011. “Tracks.” In African Cities Reader II: Mobilities and Fixtures, edited by Ntone Edjabe and Edgar Pieterse, 64–69. Vlaeberg: Chimurenga and the African Centre for Cities.

    Google Scholar 

  • Manase, Irikidzayi. 2005. “Making Memory: Stories from Staffrider Magazine and ‘Testing’ the Popular Imagination.” African Studies 64 (1): 55–72.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massey, Doreen. 1994. Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mathieson, Charlotte. 2015. Mobility in the Victorian Novel: Placing the Nation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mbembe, Achille. 2003. “Necropolitics.” Public Culture 15 (1): 11–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mbembe, Achille, Nsizwa Dlamini, and Grace Khunou. 2008. “Soweto Now.” In Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis, edited by Sarah Nuttall and Achille Mbembe, 239–247. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mbembe, Achille, and Sarah Nuttall. 2008. “Introduction: Afropolis.” In Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis, edited by Sarah Nuttall and Achille Mbembe. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCaul, Colleen. 1991. “The Commuting Conundrum.” In Apartheid City in Transition, edited by Mark Swilling, Richard Humphries, and Khehla Shubane, 218–230. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McClintock, Anne. 1987. “‘Azikwelwa’ (We Will Not Ride): Politics and Value in South African Poetry.” Critical Inquiry 13: 597–623.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCracken, Donal P., and Ruth Teer-Tomaselli. 2013. “Communication in Colonial and Post-Colonial Southern Africa.” In The Handbook of Communication History, edited by Peter Simonson, Janice Peck, Robert T. Craig, and John Jackson, 424–439. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mom, Gijs, Colin Divall, and Peter Lyth. 2009. “Towards a Paradigm Shift? A Decade of Transport and Mobility History.” In Mobility in History, edited by Gijs Mom, Gordon Pirie, and Laurent Tissot, 13–40. Switzerland: Presses universitaires suisses.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morley, David. 2000. Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moss, Glenn. 1997. “Ringing the Changes: Twenty-Five years of Ravan Press.” In Ravan: Twenty-Five Years (1972–1977), edited by G. E. de Villiers, 13–23. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mutloatse, Mothobi. 1980. “Introduction.” In Forced Landing, edited by Mothobi Mutloatse, 1–7. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mzamane, Mbulelo Vizikhungo. 1977. “The Short Story Tradition in Black South Africa.” Marang: Journal of Language and Literature 1 (1): n.p.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mzamane, Mbulelo Vizikhungo. 1991. “The Impact of Black Consciousness on Culture.” In Bounds of Possibility: Steve Biko and the Legacy of Black Consciousness, edited by N. Barney Pityana, Mamphela Ramphele, Malusi Mpumlwana, and Lindy Wilson, 179–193. Cape Town: David Philip.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mzamane, Mbulelo Vizikhungo, and David R. Howarth. 2000. “Representing Blackness: Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement.” In South Africa’s Resistance Press, edited by Les Switzer and Mohamed Adhikari, 176–220. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ndebele, Njabulo S. 1986. “The Rediscovery of the Ordinary: Some New Writings in South Africa.” Journal of Southern African Studies 12 (2): 143–157.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nicholson, Judith A., and Mimi Sheller. 2016. “Race and the Politics of Mobility: Introduction.” Transfers 6 (1): 4–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nuttall, Sarah. 2004. “City Forms and Writing the ‘Now’ in South Africa.” Journal of Southern African Studies 30 (4): 731–748.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2013. “Fiction and Reality of Mobility in Africa.” Citizenship Studies 17 (6–7): 653–680.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oliphant, Andries Walter. 1990. “Staffrider Magazine and Popular History: The Opportunities and Challenges of Personal Testimony.” Radical History Review 1990 (46–47): 357–367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oliphant, Andries Walter. 1992. “Forums and Forces: Recent Trends in South African Literary Journals.” In On Shifting Sands: New Art and Literature from South Africa, edited by Kirsten Holst Petersen and Anna Rutherford, 91–103. Coventry: Dangaroo Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oliphant, Andries Walter, and Ivan Vladislavic. 1988. “Preface.” In Ten Years of Staffrider, 1978–1988, edited by Andries Walter Oliphant and Ivan Vladislavic, viii–x. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Penfold, Tom. 2017. Black Consciousness and South Africa’s National Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pirie, G. H. 1986. “Johannesburg Transport, 1905–1945: African Capitulation and Resistance.” Journal of Historical Geography 12 (1): 41–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pirie, G. H. 1987. “African Township Railways and the South African State, 1902–1963.” Journal of Historical Geography 13 (3): 283–295.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pirie, G. H. 1989. “Dismantling Railway Apartheid in South Africa, 1975–1988.” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 8 (1): 181–199.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pirie, G. H. 1992a. “Rolling Segregation into Apartheid: South African Railways, 1948–53.” Journal of Contemporary History 27 (4): 671–693.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pirie, G. H. 1992b. “Travelling Under Apartheid.” In The Apartheid City and Beyond: Urbanization and Social Change in South Africa, edited by David M. Smith, 173–182. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pirie, G. H. 1993. “Railways and Labour Migration to the Rand Mines: Constraints and Significance.” Journal of Southern African Studies 19 (4): 713–730.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pirie, G. H. 2009. “Virtuous Mobility: Moralising vs Measuring Geographical Mobility in Africa.” Afrika Focus 22 (1): 21–35.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pirie, G. H. 2015. “Colours, Compartments and Corridors: Racialized Spaces, Mobility and Sociability in South Africa.” In Cultural Histories of Sociabilities, Spaces and Mobilities, edited by Colin Divall, 39–51. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pirie, G. H. 2016. “Letters, Words, Worlds: The Naming of Soweto.” In Place Names in Africa: Colonial Urban Legacies, Entangled Histories, edited by Liora Bigon, 143–157. Switzerland: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Priya Uteng, Tanu, and Karen Lucas. 2018. “The Trajectories of Urban Mobilities in the Global South: An Introduction.” In Urban Mobilities in the Global South, edited by Tanu Priya Uteng and Karen Lucas, 1–18. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Revill, George. 2012. Railway. London: Reaktion Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richards, Jeffrey, and John M. MacKenzie. 1986. The Railway Station. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richter, Amy G. 2005. Home on the Rails: The Railroad and the Rise of Public Domesticity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Savage, Michael. 1986. “The Imposition of Pass Laws on the African Population in South Africa 1916–1984.” African Affairs 85 (339): 181–205.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. 1986. The Railway Journey. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seiler, Cotten. 2009. “Mobilizing Race, Racializing Mobility: Writing Race into Mobility Studies.” In Mobility in History, edited by Gijs Mom, Gordon Pirie, and Laurent Tissot, 229–233. Switzerland: Presses universitaires suisses.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seroke, Jaki. 1981. “Staffriders Speaking: Black Writers in South Africa. Miriam Tlali, Sipho Sepamla, Mothobi Mutloatse.” Staffrider 4 (3): 41–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • Setuke, Brian. 1980. “Dumani.” In Forced Landing, edited by Mothobi Mutloatse, 58–68. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sheller, Mimi. 2018. Mobility Justice. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. 2006. “The New Mobilities Paradigm.” Environment and Planning A 38 (2): 207–226.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. 2016. “Mobilizing the New Mobilities Paradigm.” Applied Mobilities 1 (1): 10–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Siluma, Michael. 1978. “Naledi Train.” Staffrider 1 (4): 2–4.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simons, Harold Jack, and R.E. Simons. 1969. Class and Colour in South Africa, 1850–1950. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spalding, Stephen D., and Benjamin Fraser, eds. 2012. Trains, Literature and Culture: Reading and Writing the Rails. Plymouth: Lexington Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomas, Peter. 2014. “Railways.” In The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities, edited by Peter Adey, David Bissell, Kevin Hannam, Peter Merriman, and Mimi Sheller, 214–224. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tlali, Miriam. 1980. “Voices from the Ghetto: The Last Train from Faraday.” Staffrider 3 (4): 3–4.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tlali, Miriam. 1989. “Fud-u-u-a.” In Footprints in the Quag: Stories & Dialogues from Soweto, 27–42. Cape Town and Johannesburg: David Philip.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trump, Martin. 1988. “Black South African Short Fiction in English Since 1976.” Research in African Literatures 19 (1): 34–64.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tshabangu, Mango. 1978. “Thoughts in a Train.” Staffrider 1 (2): 27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Urry, John. 1994. Consuming Places. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Urry, John. 2007. Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vaughan, Michael. 1982. Literature and Politics: Currents in South African Writing in the Seventies. Journal of Southern African Studies 9 (1): 118–138.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vaughan, Michael. 1984. “Staffrider and Directions within Contemporary South African Literature.” In Literature and Society in South Africa, edited by Tim Couzens and Landeg White, 196–212. Harlow: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vaughan, Michael. 1985. “Literature and Populism in South Africa: Reflections on the Ideology of Staffrider.” In Marxism and African Literature, edited by Georg M. Gugelberger, 195–220. London: James Currey.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vladislavic, Ivan. 2008. “Staffrider: An Essay.” Accessed 11 December 2018. http://chimurengalibrary.co.za/staffrider-an-essay-by-ivan-vladislavic.

  • Wade, Michael. 1994. “Trains as Tropes: The Role of the Railway in Some South African Literary Texts.” In Altered State? Writing and South Africa, edited by Elleke Boehmer, Laura Chrisman, and Kenneth Parker, 75–90. Sydney: Dangaroo Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Witulski, Udo. 1986. “Black Commuters in South Africa.” Africa Insight 16 (1): 10–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolmar, Christian. 2009. Blood, Iron & Gold: How the Railways Transformed the World. London: Atlantic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright, Laurence. 2010. “Third World Express: Trains and ‘Revolution’ in Southern African Poetry.” Literator 31 (1): 1–18.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright, Laurence. 2011. “‘Iron on Iron’: Modernism Engaging Apartheid in Some South African Railway Poems.” English Studies in Africa 54 (2): 1–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zander, Horst. 1999. “Prose-Poem-Drama: ‘Proemdra’: ‘Black Aesthetics’ versus ‘White Aesthetics’ in South Africa.” Research in African Literatures 30 (1): 12–33.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Culture, Communication and Media Studies, School of Applied Human Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

    Sarah Gibson

Authors
  1. Sarah Gibson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, Carnegie Mellon University , Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Marian Aguiar

  2. School of Literature and Languages, University of Surrey , Guildford, UK

    Charlotte Mathieson

  3. Department of English Literature & Creative Writing, Lancaster University , Lancaster, UK

    Lynne Pearce

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Gibson, S. (2019). Railing Against Apartheid: Staffrider, Township Trains, and Racialised Mobility in South Africa. In: Aguiar, M., Mathieson, C., Pearce, L. (eds) Mobilities, Literature, Culture. Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27072-8_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation