Spoornet has struck a multimillion-rand deal to operate the entire stretch of railway to Maputo. John Matshikiza went for the ride
It must be once in a lifetime, if ever, that you get a chance to travel on Spoornet’s luxurious Blue Train.
The Blue Train has won a whole slew of accolades over the years, including being voted the World’s Leading Luxury Train by the World Travel Awards in 1998. It can cost you a cool R9 000 a pop to savour the experience of the flagship of South Africa’s national rail network.
In this case, however, a group of VIPs and journalists had been invited on board for an overnight ride to Maputo. The occasion was to herald a forthcoming partnership between the South African and Mozambican rail authorities for the upgrading of the line between the South African hinterland and Mozambique’s Indian Ocean port.
We travel up to Pretoria by luxury coach and are welcomed at Pretoria Station by a cheerful group of black men in black suits studded with brass buttons, their collars and cuffs finished in fake zebra-skin, their hands encased in white gloves.
My first impression is that Spoornet has flown in Ladysmith Black Mambazo to speed us on our way, but it turns out that these are just the butlers who will be catering to our every need on the long ride to the Indian Ocean. (No stewards or redcaps here on the Blue Train you are butled by butlers.)
Through the Blue Train lounge and on to the station platform. Whatever fancy trappings railway companies try to add, a railway platform always looks like a railway platform grim, ill-lit and strictly functional. A VIP security man in an FBI crew cut advises me not to wander over to the other platforms, as he sees I am inclined to do. “Those people there might bother you, trying to hawk you things and stuff,” he points out by which he means that the peaceful looking civilians waiting patiently for an overdue commuter train might turn around and rob me without warning if I were to venture onto the wrong side of the tracks.
Just to be sure, they pull out the red-and-white hazard tape and seal off the plebeian section of the platform while we wait for the Blue Train to arrive.
8.15pm: On board at last, ensconced in an elegant, Old World cabin lined in Italian-crafted beech wood. My own personal butler is called Thabo. He is short, sleek and articulate, self-assured rather than fawning. He shows me around all the perks and gadgets built into this tiny but perfectly formed luxury boudoir on the tracks, making me feel immediately at home.
I am told that on the South African side the joints between the rails have now been welded together, thanks to new technology. Hence the smooth rollout from Pretoria station into the night, the absence of that tell-tale, hypnotic “clickety-clack” beneath your feet, the backing track to distant childhood adventures on the Zululand line.
Cocktails, dinner and a late rendezvous with a comfortable bed.
6am: Wake with the sense that we have entered another world. We are indeed in a different space and time, moving through a ravine cut between craggy hills, with a boulder-strewn river rushing along the bottom. Beyond the ravine are thriving farmlands, plantations of coffee, sugar and bananas, and the tough, timeless rhythm of the earth, cut slantwise by the early morning sun.
Life is beautiful out here. How is it that we cannot bear to leave the city?
7.15am: I really didn’t expect to be enjoying a hot shower on a moving train, but everything works. Soft towels, stone-lined basin, taps that they swear are plated with real gold. Annoyed that I forgot to bring my monkey wrench with me, so that I can try and pull one off strictly as a souvenir, of course.
9.35am: Breakfast is behind us. Thabo pops his head round the door of the cabin to hand me my anti- mosquito lotion. They’ve thought of everything.
The train moves slowly out of Komatipoort station, dragging us across the border. Ten minutes later we are pulling into Resanno Garcia on the Mozambican side. The architecture, the atmosphere, the poverty and posture of the people everything is different. In the bat of an eyelid we have crossed out of boer country into a Latin world, yet we are still in Africa.
Jessie Duarte, South Africa’s high commissioner to Mozambique, and her British counterpart have come up from Maputo with a delegation of Mozambican officials to join the train on its last leg into the capital city.
I can understand Duarte’s presence on this historic journey to seal a new era of co-operation between two Southern African neighbours. But what has brought the British high commissioner out to play? Nostalgia for the old imperial days, when the Blue Train carried King George VI and General Smuts from Cape Town to Pretoria?
In fact, the high commissioner is there to represent British companies that have played a critical role in the reconstruction of the port of Maputo, end point of the railroad and another key component in opening up the Maputo Corridor. Nostalgia might be there for all of us, but commitment to the creation of a new reality is the bottom line.
Ah, nostalgia. This might indeed have been the route President Paul Kruger followed as he escaped from his beloved Transvaal Republic, routed by British forces in the last days of the Anglo-Boer War. Except that there would have been no Blue Train around at the time to carry him away in the dignified manner he thought he deserved. Instead, a jarring ride behind a steam locomotive into an exile from which he was never to return.
Progress is a lot slower on this side of the border. The tracks still await the upgrade that has made the ride on the South African side so smooth. Here, we are back to the reassuring “clickety-clack” of times gone by.
Halfway to Maputo, we pass a local passenger train waiting patiently at a siding packed with passengers. The train is ancient, rusted, windowless. The passengers seem to have nowhere to sit, no space to turn. The contrast between our accommodation and theirs is startling. The need for Spoornet’s intervention starkly etched in that passing moment.
Compared to the journey, the arrival is almost an anti-climax. Maputo station is bare and run down, its grand faade, designed by the man who designed and gave his name to the Eiffel Tower, has the appearance of a fine coat hiding the shambles of ragged underwear.
But this is the object of our journey, and of the journey that has brought Spoornet and its Mozambican counterpart to this point of long-term cooperation.
The bells, the whistles and the Blue Train have heralded in the dawning of a new era. Now, on both sides of the border, the hard work begins.