Congestion on the trains has become virtually unbearable during peak hours. The few third-class coaches, the all too few trains, jam-packed with gasping, frightened humanity—oh, what a chance for your criminal stepbrothers.
There is little method in the operations of these criminals. Many pick-pockets just put their hands into your pocket and take what they want. More likely than not you will not feel anything as you struggle for breath in the crowd. If you do, what matter? They out-brave you and threaten you with violence. The younger pick-pockets go down on their knees, cut a hole in your trousers with a razor blade, and then let slide into their hands whatever comes forth.
But the true terror for train users comes from the rough-house thugs who hold people up at the point of a knife or gun, or simply rob and beat them up. The fear among passengers is so deep that some don't even want to admit that they have been robbed. And pay-days—Fridays, month-ends, from half-past four in the afternoon—are the devil's birthdays.
The other day we went to see for ourselves. We got to Park Station about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. People were already beginning to stream in. Almost everyone was in a hurry, and had an anxious expression. It was Friday again. Then we went through the barriers, down the steps, and into the swarms.
Flush on our arrival, plain-clothes policemen were arresting a man for robbing somebody on the platform. They twisted him round, and pushed him off through some cursing people. The drama had begun. We let a few trains pass, for we wanted to see how the people in this thick mass boarded them.
Wheee! In rushed an electric train. A man in brown overalls yelled the destination and the stops on the way, but his voice, already hoarse, couldn't rise above the din. People were jabbing at each other frantically, asking, ‘Where is it going? Where does it stop?’ Before everyone could get in, the train pulled out. Men and women were hanging precariously outside open doors, squeezing for all they were worth to get in. Then the train slid out of sight. The same thing happened with train after train.
We chanced a Dube train. It was packed, jammed like putty. On all sides humans were pressing against us; in the passage, between seats, on seat-backs—humans. Four on three-men seats, three on two-men seats. Crammed. One woman screamed for help because somebody pressed against her hard and her purse seemed to be sliding out of her pocket. At intermediate stations more and more people forced their way in.
At Phefeni Station many people got off and we had some relief. As the train moved off, in a sparkling flash, I saw a man poised on the platform like a baseball pitcher. Then he flung a missile. Crash! It struck a window. We all ducked. It looked like somebody doing it just out of hatred. Maybe he'd tried to rob people in an earlier train and failed.
Nothing much happened for the rest of the trip—that is nothing except periodic pick-pocketing and stealing of parcels which we learned about later. On our way back we met a man who was so drunk that he didn't know that he was being robbed. He got pushed out of the train and landed on his back.
In the coach next to ours three thugs assaulted a man who resisted their attempts to go through his pockets. After this the other passengers were afraid to interfere with the thugs, who robbed a few more people before getting off the train.
We met a man whose suitcase had been thrown out of a window as the train passed a station. He had to get off at the next station and come back to look for it. Wonder of wonders! He found a woman who had taken charge of the suitcase, and he got it back intact. It happened in Johannesburg.
There are various gangs operating on trains or near railway stations on the Reef. In the Moroka-Jabavu-Mofolo area and in Pimville it is mainly the Torch Gang. They specialize in ‘Dark Patch’ operation—robberies in unlit areas just outside the stations. Suddenly a man finds a torch flashed into his face, blinding him for a moment. Then a stunning blow on the head. Next thing he is lying in the grass, beaten up and robbed.
In the Orlando area there is the Mlamlankunzi Gang, a bunch of youngsters who work in the trains. One will come from behind and give you an elbow lock round the neck. Another will point a knife or a screwdriver to your belly. And then they rob you. If you resist, they throw you out of the running train.
There has been some violent reaction to these train robbers, and tsotsis in general, in the Dube area. Propped-eared Zulus first ganged together to beat them up, a natural reaction of harried people at the end of their tether.
But then it went all haywire. Some Zulus went about hitting people indiscriminately. They have a saying, ‘Hit a cap and a tsotsi will jump out.’ So anybody who wore a cap was in danger of being clubbed. Recently they went even further, beating up old women in their homes after saying, ‘Your son is a tsotsi.’ They smashed houses without having done the most elementary research.
Then, a few weeks ago, the situation became electric, and the two main opposing tribes in the area poised themselves for violence. The Zulus, chiefly from Dube Hostel, and the Basotho, with reinforcements from as far as Evaton and Vereeniging, clashed during a bloody week-end of violence. They went at each other with murderous weapons, including battle axes. During three days about forty people were killed and a hundred injured. The police were at it day and night keeping the blood-mad warriors from each other, and sometimes they were forced to shoot.
What caused this sudden violent explosion? In a certain sense, it was not a surprise to those of us who live in these townships. We have lived with terrorism for so long and we have always feared that one day there would be an eruption. You can't live with assault, robbery and murder without something big happening eventually.
The situation has been aggravated, according to many people, by the policy of ethnic grouping, which has led the more tribal among us to think of other tribes as ‘foreigners’, ‘enemies’. We are not allowed to learn to live together in peace, say the train-using, bus-boarding philosophers to whom the Dube wave of terror has become a matter of life and death.