NIGHT TRAIN

“Night Train” is the 55 minute documentary feature that brings to light the dark side of the “iron road” – the railway line built by President Paul Kruger from Johannesburg to Lorenzo Marques in 1894 – and the “night trains” that subsequently ferried some 5 million Mozambican migrant workers between 1901 & the 1960s to work the coal & gold fields of the Witwatersrand that built the prosperous industrial economy of South Africa.

Integral to the soundtrack is the composition “Stimela” – composed & performed by the late great South African musician Hugh Masekela – evocatively capturing the enduring memory and trauma of journeys on steam-trains such as the “Night Train” – that chiseled their way into the souls of black men and women across Southern Africa.

Musician and mining engineer David Marks takes us into the depths of the underground world experienced night & day by mineworkers & his three compositions “Number not a Name”, “Master Jack” and “Mountains of Men” provide emotive dimensions to the narrative structure and soundtrack.

Retired Mozambican migrant workers Fernando Nyabola & Alfred Wachane reflect back on their experiences riding the “night train” & working the gold mines of the Witwatersrand.

Captured & interned during the Second Boer War, twenty-five-year-old Winston Churchill was another to have a memorable journey via the “iron road”.

Inspired by the academic research of Professor Charles van Onselen as published in his work, The Night Trains – this is their story and the story of the “night trains” run from Booysens Station, Johannesburg to Ressano Garcia Mozambique – that from 1900 to the 1960s – ferried some 5 million Mozambican migrant workers to work the coal & gold fields of the Witwatersrand that built the booming industrial economy of South Africa.

Today, that train is no more and the contribution made by these men forgotten in the mists of national amnesia as xenophobia simmers close to the surface in South Africa.