The trip from Marafe station in Soweto to Ellis Park ducking cables while ”train surfing” on the roof of a moving coach gave Mpho Morule all the recognition he wanted.
”At school the guys would be scared of you because you were the best surfer. Sometimes you’d be able to please the girls,” he said, showing a head scar where a cable struck him.
But the thrill changed when his beloved cousin Logan ”Size One” Nthuthang and brother Lloyd became ”train surfing” fatalities.
Now, Morule (23) is further from thrill-seeking sport than ever before, having joined the ranks of the safety ambassadors deployed by the South African Rail Commuter Corporation (SARCC).
In return for handing out pamphlets and preaching rail safety, Morule benefits from a R500 000-a-month programme that offers tuition in subjects such as physics and maths.
With him on the programme are another 29 former staff riders and train surfers whose studies will be taken care of for the next three years.
Sporting yellow overalls and SARCC T-shirts, they travel the tracks free of charge on season tickets valid for a month. Soon they’ll start visiting schools.
Near their wits’ end to find a solution to train safety, officials of the SARCC had to explore seriously the motives behind train surfing. They discovered that it offered recognition to adolescents living in poverty.
”First we took a punitive approach,” said Enos Ngutshane, group executive responsible for safety. ”Now, we realise that as a company we can build their futures. We approached them quietly and saw them making a change.”
The safety ambassadors will be at the forefront of a R5-million, year-long campaign launched on Thursday to make rail travel safer. The campaign also focuses on reducing crime and vandalism, including the theft of non-ferrous metal. Trains will be upgraded to make it impossible for doors to be opened while in motion.
”Since the inception and roll-out of the programme, the number of safety ambassadors and volunteers has grown to 200, while staff riding and train surfing has gone down to almost 5%,” said Ngutshane. ”The previously notorious Dube line has achieved total elimination.”
Morule puts this down to the craze having died, especially among schoolchildren who saw their friends dying.
”Now it’s just the loafers who do it, or tsotsis who escape on to the roofs of the trains after robbing people,” he said. — Sapa