by Thamsanqa Malinga
Growing up I never understood the political message of musician Hugh Masekela’s famed Train Song Stimela.
In the township it was just a Sunday anthem blasted by jazz aficionado neighbours with speakers on the veranda. The same with the popular musical cry Shosholoza that continues to be the favourite of larger gatherings, be they on sports fields and other places of entertainment. These and other songs were, and continue being, sung and enjoyed with what I think is little understanding of the painful message they embody.
Until you comprehend the painful message of Masekela’s Train Song, the context of Shosholoza or have, like myself, come across poetry such as Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali’s Amagoduka ase-Glencoe Station (Migrants at Glencoe Station), you will never grasp the dire situation faced by migrants at the Beitbridge border post nor the story of broken families in South African townships and rural villages.
In Blame Me on Apartheid I write about how South African townships trace their creation to colonialism, further maintained by apartheid, as labour reserves. This meant that the creation of townships perpetuated the problem of migrancy.
Masekela paints this musically when he belts about a steam train that rattles from town to town swallowing up people taking them to cities to dig for coal. People were forced to go work developing towns and as a result were settled in townships and other shanty towns. The townships were placed away from business districts, compounding the migration and subsequent disintegration of families as parents were, and are still, forced to reside with employers.
Whilst observing the painful picture of Zimbabwean migrants dying the at Beitbridge border post before Christmas as they tried to make their way home and those standing in the scotching sun. Come night-time they slept in the open side by side like corpses on a mass grave as they try to make their way back to South Africa.
I also observed trivial jokes on social media on whether domestic workers from rural South Africa will be coming back to their employers or they will be “escaping toxic employers”. I’ll be a monkey’s uncle as to what extent do we realise the pain of migrancy and the brokenness it brings to families.
I don't think we do take stock of how the South African economy’s dependence on migrant labour is breaking families and how that easily breeds other ills we see in our society. Also, I do not believe that some among us understand the realities, pain and hardship of those who have opted to leave their families in search of opportunities elsewhere, more especially those who participate in menial work.
In his song, Masekela moans about how the living conditions of migrants are like those of scavenging dogs. French philosopher Franz Fanon writes about men in hungry towns where they sleep “atop each other”. This is just a glimpse.
In its final report, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission painted a picture of how migrancy in South Africa was systematically created and maintained.
In the section detailing the role of mining corporations, the reports notes “migration control regulations were first drafted by the Chamber of Mines’ Native Labour Department in 1895 as a response to perceived state reluctance to organise a stable and constant labour supply”.
The president of the Chamber of Mines enthused: ”…a most excellent law… which should enable us to have complete control over the k******’.”
Scholars such as Harold Wolpe have written extensively on how “apartheid modernised the system of cheap migrant labour and perfected the instrument of labour coercion”.
While discussing the issue of migrancy and cheap labour, Wolpe alludes to the breaking down of families, stating that the extended families that are left in the reserves fulfil “social functions” necessary for the reproduction of the migrant workforce by caring for the young, the sick, the migrant labourer in periods of “rest”, and by educating the young.
He states that these families thereby relieve the capitalist sector and the state on the need to expend resources on these necessary functions.
It is such a pain to see how we are yet to fully grasp and solve this systematic creation of colonialism and apartheid of breaking down families. This is a view also expressed by Twitter commentator Mxolisi Bob, who goes by the nom de guerre of Haitian revolution leader General Jean-Jacques Dessalines.
Mxolisi remarks that “South Africa’s migrant labour system will not evaporate... it’s real and has existed long before the ANC”. He writes: “it’s impossible to eradicate migrant labour until the entire country is redesigned. It starts with the townships which is the nearest source of migrant labour, followed by feeder provinces such as KZN and Eastern Cape then goes international through SADC.”
I believe Mxolisi is right in his analysis of the eradication of migrancy. South Africa needs to develop an economic system that moves away from the colonial-apartheid formula. We have to look at reigniting economic activity in all cities, be it rural or peri-urban… consequently move away from the centralisation of economic activity only in urban areas.
That, however, is a dream deferred and likely to explode as my view is that our government is just managing the apartheid project. This, coupled with the cadre deployment system that bears the evil child that is corruption, has run down municipalities forcing people to leave their homes in search of a better life.
Unless our government wakes up and earnestly works toward turning things around, we will continue to live under the painful realism of the colonial-apartheid legacy of migrancy that we see daily in the taxi ranks, bus and train stations of metropolitan towns.
The legacy that is reflected by the clogged borders, tollgates and highways as people make the rush to get back to “cities”, leaving disintegrated families in desolate villages which are on their knees because delinquents have taken to attacking old women who are left alone to guard the homestead and grandchildren.
We will continue to live with this legacy, in townships, where children roaming the streets in the absence of the parents and young people caught in the web of alcohol, drugs and crime as a result of absent adult supervision.
The colonial-apartheid migrancy shrieks a painful cry that is articulated by Mtshali in the closing stanza of his poem as he reflects the dirge of Amagoduka (migrants) who bemoan that “we’ll return home to find our wives nursing babies unknown to us but only to their mothers and loafers”. We need our government to wake up from its slumber of colonial-apartheid servitude and redesign our economy for future generations.
* Thamsanqa Malinga is a columnist, blogger and author of ‘Blame me on Apartheid’.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
Cape Argus
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