It was 6.15am as the train pulled in to Stock Road station on the Khayelitsha line.
The doors opened. It was like peeling back the lid of a sardine tin.
"Come!" Pam Mzomba beckoned.
I hesitated as I scanned for a gap, but found that on the Khayelitsha line in rush hour, those who don't push, get pushed. I felt myself almost lifted up as the people behind me shoved us all on board and then came to a stop wedged against the back of a man who had put his hand against the train wall to anchor himself.
I couldn't move and the people were pushing from behind. My rib cage was squeezed and my foot was stuck behind someone else's.
The doors closed, the train moved off and we shuffled and wriggled to get a bit of breathing space. There was nothing to hold onto because the overhead handrails had been broken off, but we were wedged so tightly we were kept upright.
I scanned around for Pam. She smiled. This was what she did every day as she commuted between Khayelitsha and the city, where she works as a cleaner.
"The trains are a problem because they are so full. Sometimes people can't even get on. But the taxi is too expensive," she had explained.
A return taxi trip would cost her R19 a day, whereas a monthly rail ticket, subsidised by the state, costs her R90.
Cape Town has a good passenger rail network with 260km of track, 14 service routes, 97 stations. With proper investment and integration with buses and taxis, it could form the backbone of an efficient public transport system.
Instead, it is crumbling. There is a shortage of trains and many of them are ageing. The 95 trains that served the city in 1995 have been reduced to 66 running during peak hours. Every morning they make 227 trips, moving more than 246 000 people.
This represents 58 percent of all public transport commuters, followed by minibus taxis at 26 percent and buses at 16 percent.
Experts say to get our national rail system working properly would take R10-billion over 10 years - four times what the government is spending now.
The Khayelitsha trains are so crowded in peak hours that most passengers stand for the entire journey. In Pam's case, it's an hour each way.
She lives in the shackland of Khayelitsha's Harare, closer to Somerset West than Cape Town.
She leaves home around 5.15am, walks 1,7km to the station, catches the 6am train and arrives in town around 7am. With a 12-minute walk to work she is always late, but to arrive on time she would have to leave home 20 minutes earlier.
She walks to the station in the dark most months of the year, but leaving 20 minutes earlier would mean she would have to walk in the dark alone.
"I'm scared of skollies. They hide and if they see someone walking alone, they can jump out and rob you, maybe they can even rape you. So I wait 'til quarter past five because then there are other people also walking. We don't talk because I don't know them, but we just walk together."
She could take the quicker and safer option of a taxi to the station, but unless it's raining she walks to save the R3 taxi fare.
The streets were quiet and it was cold as we waited for her in the dark under the yellow street lights. The few people about were togged up against the chilly wind, hurrying to the station.
It was a new-looking train we boarded, almost empty here at the start of the line. These are known as "silvers" because of their colour, and they're faster than the older trains called "madala" (old man).
Although it was new, the overhead handrails were all missing, and so were three windows. When it rains, commuters push their umbrellas into the broken windows to keep the rain out.
Every seat was taken before we left, and three stops later, even standing room was crammed.
At Stock Road station we got off to catch a "madala" to experience an older train. That's where I was pushed on board by a wall of people.
There were notices on almost all the windows which read: "Caution. Temporary window." I was told that because the trains were so crowded, passengers often could not squeeze through the throng to get off at stations, so bundled out of the windows. Many were broken in this way.
Our "madala" was so crammed it didn't seem possible for any more passengers to board, but they did.
So many got on at Philippi that the doors could not close. The train moved off with half-a-dozen men hanging on in the open doorway, feet on the train and fingers gripping the roof.
A passenger, Vuyani Ndashe, told me he had seen a man fall off a train. He was killed.
"It was so cold that I think his fingers sort of froze so he couldn't feel to hold on tightly," he explained.
At the next station we changed coaches. This time I knew the pushing drill. As we moved off a passenger suddenly started shouting. I looked at Pam in alarm, but she smiled.
"He's a preacher." We were on a "church coach", where passengers create a spontaneous church service.
The preaching stopped and the whole coach started singing in that unique African harmony, women's voices high and the men's deep and throaty. I was squashed so tight against one man I could feel the vibration of his voice against my arm.
As I listened to the voices rise above the clacking of the rails, I was moved, almost humbled.
It was a ghastly trip they made every day, these, the city's poor, many travelling from tin shacks to menial jobs and returning to tin shacks. They travelled on the only transport they could afford: trains that were grubby, unreliable, crowded and often dangerous.
They could have complained, they could have sat in stony silence, but instead they sang.
I could not help wondering for how much longer. Upcountry train commuters seemed to have reached a threshold of intolerance with train delays, poor infrastructure and cuts in services, and have turned violent.
From September last year there have been increasing incidents of commuters setting fire to stations and trains. This month a technical fault, which caused yet another train delay in Soweto, led to a riot where 29 coaches were set alight, bringing the service to a standstill and costing R200-million.
Like the children in Soweto in 1976, who burned their schools in anger against an apartheid education system they felt unable to change, commuters are burning trains out of frustration with a creaking transport system they feel powerless to change.
And like the riots in Soweto which spread to Cape Town, it is probably only a matter of time before train violence erupts in our city.
Some worrying statistics
- Railways urgently need a R10-billion investment nationally to function properly.
- Government has earmarked around R3-billion which will focus on selected areas.
- The 96 trains servicing Cape Town in 1996 have been cut to 66 today.
- Trains move 601 000 people a day in Cape Town, 58 percent of all public transport users.
- Rolling stock and infrastructure are ageing, creating serious safety problems.
- SA trains are 25 years old on average; the international average is 16 years old.
- Tracks are not maintained properly and embankments are eroded.
- Overcrowding on city trains has led to deaths as people fall from doors that are unable to close.
- Control over railways is highly fragmented between SA Rail Commuter Corporation, Intersite, and Metrorail, leading to inefficiency and funding problems.
- Rail management is not accountable to metropolitan planning.
- Department of transport has a serious lack of skilled senior staff.
- Fifty percent of people given houses in Delft returned to squat in Khayelitsha to be near the trains.
- This is the first in a series of articles this week on the crisis in Cape Town's transport.