The Sunday Mail
In 1973 when Elton John released “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, he was probably at the peak of his powers as a musician.
The album is one of his most critically acclaimed, outselling other rock compilations by a mile and truly launching Elton John into the stratosphere.
Written in two weeks and carrying 17 songs, it had hits like “Bennie and the Jets”, Saturday night’s alright for fighting”, and “Candle in the Wind”; as well the magnificent title track and the relatively under-appreciated “I’ve seen that movie too”.
The album in its totality, and more particularly the song “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, is pregnant with the twin obsessions of fame and nostalgia.
The title was derived from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, an 1865 novel by Lewis Carroll, real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
The reference itself was specifically drawn from the 1939 movie adaptation of the novel titled “The Wizard of Oz”, in which Dorothy follows a yellow brick road (the metaphorical wide and easy road paved in gold) in her quest to fulfil her life’s fantasies.
To those who watched the BBC programme “HARDtalk” last week, I’ve probably given myself away as to where I’m going with this.
Stephen Sackur said Nelson Chamisa’s bullet trains dream was like something from Alice in Wonderland, among other unflattering things.
It was an interview outcome that was decidedly unflattering for someone aspiring to national office in a few weeks. It was kind of like Hitler: short and brutal.
Some felt Sackur was condescending, patronising and insulting. Others felt Chamisa brought it upon himself, that he best leave the yellow brick road he has been speeding headlong down for months now, and return to reality.
Whatever the verdict, I must thank Chamisa for inadvertently – and rather clumsily – focusing my attentions on a critical issue of national development: our rail system.
Last week, Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga addressed military officers at Zimbabwe Defence University on “Corporate Governance of State Enterprises and Parastatals in Zimbabwe as a National Security Issue”.
It is within this context that we need to appreciate the National Railways of Zimbabwe as a strategic asset whose performance has implications on national economic stability.
An understanding of how our rail system was built, and for what purpose, would go a long way to revamping the NRZ and unlocking its value.
Thomas Wilke’s paper, “Reimagining Zimbabwe’s Cape-to-Cairo Railroad”, would be a good starting point.
Charles Mbohwa has also written on this subject (“Operating a railway system within a challenging environment: Economic history and experiences of Zimbabwe’s national railways”), but I am yet to complete going through that so I will rely more on Wilke’s take.
He says, “Hoping to advance Great Britain’s influence … Cecil Rhodes organised private investors in financing a railroad stretching the length of the continent, from Britain’s southern holdings to the Mediterranean Sea.
“Known as the Cape-to-Cairo Railroad, the project was intended to open lands to mining and white settlement, forming a continuous ‘red line’ of British territories across Africa.”
Rhodes, with the assistance of engineers Charles Metcalfe and George Pauling, set about laying the foundation for a railroad that was to reach Bulawayo in 1897, at which point a banner was erected, proclaiming “Our two roads to progress: Railroads and Rhodes”.
That line was to get to the Zambezi River in 1904 and thereafter the copper fields of what is now the DRC, then the Belgian Congo.
“The British weren’t alone in considering a continent-spanning railroad. Other colonial powers including the French (Senegal to Djibouti) and Portuguese (Angola to Mozambique) were considering railroad projects.
“When he began promoting the Cape-to-Cairo, Rhodes was already an outspoken proponent of transportation systems needed to support expansion within the mining industry,” writes Wilke’s.
We are told that Rhodes directed that the rail line pass through Hwange, because of its coal, and then proceed to the tourist attraction of Victoria Falls and further into Central Africa.
The rail network was built to cater for considerations intrinsic to the colonial economy.
Africans’ role in this infrastructure development was to provide the closest thing to slave labour since ships forcibly took their ancestors across the Atlantic.
Rhodes was thinking of coal. Rhodes was thinking of lead and zinc in Zambia (those mines failed, but the line was to then work well for copper). We may not like the economy Rhodes was building, but he was building an economy, one for his kith and kin.
He died in 1902 in the Cape Colony, and his body was transported by rail to World’s View atop Matobo.
After his death, World War I proved profitable for rail, as Europe devoured Central and Southern Africa’s copper, lead and other raw materials.
The rail line was to reach Belgian Congo in the 1920s, and what was then called Mashonaland Rail Company – under the title Beira and Mashonaland and Rhodesia Railways – made good coin by moving minerals.
On October 1, 1927 the working name became Rhodesia Railways Company, and from around that time, the line to the Port of Beira in Mozambique grew in importance for mining and then agricultural produce.
From the first of October 1937, Rhodesia Railways Limited assumed ownership of the whole system in Zimbabwe and Zambia as well as the Vrburg-Bulawayo line. The section from Vryburg (South Africa) to Ramathlabana (Botswana) became the property of South African Railways in late 1959.
By then, starting from November 1949, Rhodesia Railways Limited was a government statutory entity, a status that subsists until today; though in 1967 the line going north from Victoria Falls was to be owned by Zambia Railways because Northern Rhodesia was dead.
Rhodesia Railways was to be briefly called Zimbabwe Rhodesia Railways in 1979 because of Abel Muzorewa’s schizophrenic political arrangement, and then National Railways of Zimbabwe from Independence in 1980.
Wilke’s says, “From its beginning, the railroad was designed to advance colonial ambitions with lines intentionally planned to bypass Native Reserves and instead pass in close proximity to areas containing white farms.
“The opposite approach was used in cities where tracks connected industrial areas with high density suburbs that supplied native labour. Travel itself reinforced racial and economic divisions. While Europeans rode in the relative comfort of first or second class coaches, native Africans were crowded into third class compartments.”
Today, our major lines all radiate from mining, agricultural and industrial hubs to ports in Mozambique and South Africa.
The NRZ operates around 3 400km of rail line, with the 1 067mm gauge standard across Southern Africa to ensure the entire region can transport its raw materials seamlessly to ports. The reality of the rail system is that it was not built to move people. It was built to move goods. Ferrying people is a positive side effect, particularly for the tourism industry.
(The Man in Ayi Kwei Armah’s “The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born” relates this rail economy actuality in starker detail.)
Any reinvigoration of our rail system, the parastatal that runs it and its related stakeholders, must contend with this reality.
Which is why an NRZ reform plan must look at industrial revival, agricultural value addition, and minerals beneficiation so that we no longer just send raw materials to the ports.
Yes, people too will be moved.
But for now, investing in bullet trains is taking a leisurely and expensive walk down yellow brick road.
