Like teenagers everywhere, they’re gunning for a thrill and they find it train surfing, writes Mosa Damane.
Johannesburg - Whiteboy and Tupac are chilling on a bench at New Canada station before their usual high-octane commute to school.
Whiteboy, 18, wears a striped T-shirt, shorts and brown suede shoes. He’s smoking Dunhill Courtleigh blends like a chimney. His macala (friend) Tupac is a year younger, neat in school kit and black Toughees with red laces, high as a kite on weed, with sleepy red eyes. Their excited schoolgirl fans can’t wait to see the action.
The boys are train surfers on the Soweto to Jozi Metrorail. Whiteboy, a master of the bhegos (a backwards-running move in platform surfing) with a rep to preserve, started surfing when he was 12.
“A classmate, Lucky, introduced me; now I have my own students. Surfers have banned me from performing on the platform; I’m too good. They prefer to see me do the matrix on top of the train,” he says.
It was on top of a train that 15-year-old surfer Ayabonga Mphoso was electrocuted in February while commuting to school from Khayelitsha to Cape Town.
After the train left Philippi station, there was a loud bang. The train came to a halt and the Grade 8 boy’s body was found on the carriage roof, his school books beside him.
There’s a high risk in all train surfing moves. In platform surfing, there is isipharaphara, where you hop in and out of a moving train, hands grabbing hold of the steel bar on the train door. Even more dangerous is Whiteboy’s backwards specialty.
The bhegos is performed on the carriage roof of a moving train, and involves bending backwards to avoid the overhead electric cables and girders. There are points of etiquette: beginners climb to the roof from the space between carriages; veterans take the harder route from a carriage window, both while the train is in motion.
Then there’s the gravel, running along the rail rocks next to the sleepers hanging on to that steel bar; and the tsho dlozi (swinging outside a moving train with the doors closed, holding tight to the roof edge).
At New Canada station, a train arrives on platform 3. As it pulls out, Whiteboy and Tupac swoop, one grabbing a door while the other side surfs with isipharaphara. They bench, let go of the ride when they realise the train is not heading for Jozi.
“It’s a pity I’m wearing my school shoes,” says Tupac. “I wish you could see me rocking my black 35s (All Stars). Ngiyashisa kabuhlungu kabi (I’m too hot). Whiteboy taught me the basics. In 2010, I was shaky; now I can do all the tricks. I don’t get a thrill from riding unless I’ve smoked a joint.”
Train surfing’s been going on for years. A decade or so ago, surfers bonded in violent gangs that terrorised kid commuters and graduated to lives of crime. These days, group structures are less rigid though still substance-fuelled. Gangs are largely gone and the tough guy image mellowed, with surfing practised for fun, thrills, status.
“At 7am, we gather for a joint before surfing trains that come and go from different areas,” says Whiteboy.
“My favourite place is the Croesus curve towards Langlaagte station, where spectators get to see me do gravel side.”
Whiteboy doesn’t think about death when he’s surfing, only about getting his moves right.
“I don’t focus on the crowd either. I keep myself safe by focussing on making the right moves and grips. When the guards do a stop and search for illegal commuters and surfers, I climb on the roof. No one will come after me. They are scared of the voltage and it’s my game – catch me if you can!”
Finally, train 9334 arrives and departs for the classroom with Whiteboy doing a spectacular bhegos as Tupac hitches in and out of a carriage door with isipharaphara.
For train surfers, the last station on the line, if they escape the morgue, is growing up and moving on. Then, like old soldiers, they just fade away. Sonic, former member of the once-feared Rough Riders gang, is now 31, living alone in a two-room shack in Mzimhlophe, selling sweets and snacks to make ends meet.
He was only 11 when his friend Sisqo introduced him to the “cheesy” life of train surfing and he remembers his first journey on train 9323. “We boarded at Mzimhlophe station and on our way to Mjibha (Joburg), pupils changed out of their uniforms and wore jeans hidden in their school bags,” he says. “Girls put on make-up, lipstick. I was attracted to this fast life in the train: boys surfing, smoking and beautiful girls screaming and cheering those who surfed all the way to Jozi.”
That day in Jozi, they moved on to Moonlight, a club not far from the taxi rank, where Sonic had his first beer and smoked his first cigarette, to be part of the crew. “We spent the whole day dancing to dope loud house music,” he says. “On our way home, the gang mugged anyone who happened to be in the way. I mugged a skinny boy, took his cash and belongings.
“Zile, the big boss of the Rough Riders, was impressed with what I did and I was welcomed as a member of the gang because of what I did to that poor skinny boy.
“I learnt a lot as a Rough Rider: invading a platform full of pupils like hyenas in search of the weakest victims to rob. A single hot klap made things easier. We would surround a group of coconuts and take all phones and money. No one would come after us, even those who knew us from Mzini (Mzimhlophe) where we come from.”
Sonic got his nickname because of his speed when platform surfing. “I twisted my right hand on Dube platform 3,” he says. “I was high on benzene, missed my step and flew like a jet before landing on my hand. Tjo! Damn! On that day, I banned benzene for life and stuck to alcohol and zolo (weed).”
In February 2002, Sonic, then 18, was arrested with other Rough Riders. He spent four years in prison for robbery, two of them at Diambo juvenile prison in Krugersdorp (“a small heaven; we ate seven colours – tsotsi taal for Sunday lunch – every day and watched DStv”).
Another old soldier is Spider, now 26 and one of the few train surfers who got electrocuted by an overhead catenary wire – and lived to tell the tale.
For Spider, it started when he was 13, in Grade 8 at Anchor Comprehensive High School in Orlando West. “My heroes were the Amaroto (Rats) gang and their spharaphara (hopping) moves on the trains,” he says. “I didn’t hesitate and was quick to show on my first ride to Macanas (New Canada station) that I am brave and ready to be a member.”
Train 9323, known to the Rats as the schoolbus, carried schoolkid commuters only – no adult would brave the mayhem.
“For booze and drugs, we mugged cheese boys and girls (kids with rich parents), those with expensive phones and bags,” says Spider. “Our favourite treat was vodka and papsak; we enjoyed surfing under the influence of alcohol and drugs.”
A girl nicknamed Mum Rider joined the Rats. She was a 16-year-old Grade 11 pupil at Langlaagte Technical High School and Spider remembers her as “very beautiful and full of drama, like a gangster”. Mum Rider carried a silver flick knife and Spider had a thing for her, but found her too intimidating. “She was a pacer, demon fast on the platform with magic and pace in her feet.”
Spider’s career as a surfer ended in 2004; he was 15, still a young Roto. “It was Friday afternoon 2.45 and my gang was on fire, high on drugs and drink. I vividly remember climbing on top of the train and bracing myself for the matrix stunt. What happened after, I don’t remember at all.”
The high voltage shock cost Spider two broken ribs, two front teeth and a non-functioning right hand. Today, he lives with his parents in Orlando West, wears a cap to cover his scalp wounds and draws a disability grant of R1 250 a month. Spider, whose surfing friend Madrugs lost his right arm after a voltage shock, says he would like to work for Metrorail, educating young commuters on the perils of train surfing.
“My message to surfers is simple: I know you feel like you own the world, but the end result is not funny – you either die or get disabled for the rest of your life.”
“I don’t have death figures,” says Metrorail Gauteng spokeswoman Lillian Mofokeng. “We have safety campaigns. Every Friday, we choose a school or station for our commuter educational programme. Metrorail has arrested some of the surfers, but most are as young as 14, and we can’t charge a minor who is badly injured and needs medical attention.”
As for arresting them, “train surfers are too good for our security guards”, admits Mofokeng. “Guards are not trained to chase people on the roof of a moving train.”
* Mosa Damane is a freelance journalist. This article first appeared on GroundUp.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Star