There But For the Grace of God

“Black and Blue in South Africa.” There it was, all of a sudden, an idea in my head.

It was a glorious day in Cape Town. It was hot, but not unbearable. The sun was shining. There was a breeze that actually felt soft against your skin. A few white clouds hung above iconic Table Mountain and the skies above Lions Head were clear and blue. The promenade, a walkway that winds itself along the Atlantic Ocean, was alive with activity: people walking their dogs, caregivers pushing pensioners in wheelchairs, joggers running with ear buds in their ears, children kicking soccer balls and others just lounging on benches or standing at the sea wall looking at the glistening waters of the Atlantic. A few kayakers paddled past, close to the rocky shore. Further out to sea, massive ships waited their turn to enter the harbor. It was the kind of day that Midwesterners fantasize about in the dark, cold, wintery months of January and February in the United States. And I was in Cape Town, walking along the promenade and taking in all of the sites and sounds of life in one of the most beautiful, fascinating and contradictory cities in the world.

And then it came to me. “Black and Blue in South Africa.” A title for a book I had never before considered writing. Traveling by train, a mode of transportation I had never taken on my many trips to this Rainbow Nation. Exploring the worlds of the haves and the have-nots that I had never seriously considered in the past.

It was 2003 and I was in South Africa on a six-month fellowship working to establish nutrition programs for people infected with HIV/AIDS in the black townships located outside of Cape Town. As often as possible, after spending the day in a township like Guguletu, I would hurry back to Cape Town for a therapeutic, solitary walk along the promenade – a chance to process the sometimes horrific stories that come from working in a community where 40% of the population is unemployed and nearly one in five adults is HIV-positive.

Friends from the U.S. were planning a visit to South Africa and were interested in taking a trip on the Blue Train – a luxury tourist train that I had never heard of. I made inquiries for them and discovered that the cost for a ticket between Cape Town and Pretoria was prohibitive, even for my successful American friends. Actually, the price was more than prohibitive; it was shocking. For the cost of a single one-way ticket on the Blue Train, basically a 24-hour adventure, 100 people living with HIV/AIDS in the townships could receive a hot meal, five days a week, for a month.

I didn’t think any more of the Blue Train, at least I wasn’t aware of doing so, but the disparities between those who have power and privilege and those who do not, must have been percolating unconsciously in my mind. For when the idea for “Black and Blue in South Africa” showed itself to me on that sunny day along the promenade in Cape Town, it came nearly fully formed.

Life on and along the train tracks that run between Cape Town and Pretoria would form a narrative arc for a book examining the human costs of economic segregation. Here, as in other parts of the world, rail lines cut communities into two. There is life on one side of the tracks and there is life on the “other” side, or the “wrong” side, of the tracks. The disparity becomes glaringly obvious when a very select group of people – usually white and privileged – travel in luxury on the Blue Train; while the overwhelming majority – usually people of color and poor – go economy class in the sitter cars of a train called the Shosholoza Meyl.

The beautiful Blue Train makes only one stop where passengers disembark. On the southern trip between Pretoria and Cape Town, the stop is to explore Kimberly and to see the “Big Hole” which was excavated by hand in search of diamonds. On the trip north, between Cape Town and Pretoria, the Blue Train stops at the Victorian village of Matjiesfontein, located in the Great Karoo Desert, where passengers wander the few streets of this African dorp and enjoy a sherry before returning to the train to bathe and dress for dinner.

In every town that the Blue Train passes through, the people on the platform stare into the opulent carriages. At times, when the train is stopped, those waiting for the next Shosholoza might cup their hands together and put their faces right up to the glass to get a better peek at how the other half lives. At night, when the cars of the Blue Train glow from the subtle lighting, the Blue Train passing through town is a jaw-dropping site. If it’s not too late, the locals from the other side of the tracks will turn up to just watch the passengers enjoying cocktails in the lounge car or having dinner in the dining car.

There is no interaction between the passengers of the Blue Train and the people who live in the towns it passes through. There is conversation on the train, however, about the beauty of the landscape as well as the utter poverty of some of the homes located very near the tracks.  Sometimes, generalizations are made about what the passengers think they are seeing. The comments aren’t always well informed or kind.

I can’t understand what one especially well dressed man on the Blue Train means when he says, “There but for the grace of God…” I know what the expression means, of course, but does he really think that he ever could have ended up living in a shack along the train tracks of South Africa? His whiteness, his maleness, and his heterosexuality, to say nothing of his wealth, education, status and privilege, makes the second coming of Jesus Christ a more likely occurrence than this gentleman ever knowing what it is like to live on the “wrong” side of the tracks.

The people who do live on that side of the tracks, the ones who sit in economy class on the Shosholoza, know every town along the route between Cape Town and Johannesburg because the train stops in every one of them. A few passengers get on and a few get off, but mostly the passengers sit in their straight-backed chairs for the entire 27-hour journey between cities.

Both trains, the Blue Train and the Shosholoza, pass through the stunning vineyards in wine country with their tended crops and stately homes.  Not one of the 70 passengers in the car I ride in on the Shosholoza, all of them, except for me being people of color, says while looking at the wealthy communities outside the train’s windows, “There but for the grace of God…” Barring some kind of a miracle, or a twist of fate, they know they will never change places with the people who live on the so-called “right” side of the tracks. They also know that God had nothing to do with them ending up on life’s Shosholoza. That was all man’s doing.