Limpopo Line

To Maputo by train

From Parade Magazine, September 1989

We were welcomed to the dawn of the small railway town of Chicualacuala just inside the Mozambique border, by two explosions, one blasting from either side of the town.

We had travelled from Rutenga the night before on an engineers' trolley of the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ). Our hosts were George Manicombe (NRZ engineer), Mark Jumpies, Roy Porter, Mashoja and their staff have been building and rebuilding railways for Zimbabwe for the last 25 years.

Ahead of us was one armoured mine-proof trolley, a V-shaped contraption on wheels looking like the lead vehicle from the re-invasion of Earth by aliens from outer space.

These men are the "A"-team. The platelayers, trolley drivers and engineers who rebuilt the Beira Corridor with CFM (Mozambique Railways), and are now almost half way to completing the rebuilding of the Limpopo Line.

The Limpopo railway, running 524 km from the border with Zimbabwe, through the Mozambican border town of Chicualacuala, to the Port of Maputo, is the most important corridor for the landlocked SADCC countries of Botswana and Zimbabwe.

Built in 1957 to enable Rhodesia to export directly to Maputo, avoiding dependence on South Africa, this line used to carry up to three million tonnes of goods per year.

With specialised handling facilities for bulk goods like sugar, coal, citrus, ferrochrome and containerised goods, the port of Maputo is at the moment capable of handling all Zimbabwe's bulk mineral exports, asbestos, ferrochrome, steel, coal, as well as sugar.

At the moment Zimbabwe exports some goods through Maputo by rail through South Africa to reach Mozambique's main port via the Ressano Garcia line.

Transport Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi estimates that with the Limpopo railway line re-opened, Zimbabwe would save $100 million in reduced freight costs. At the moment the extra forex is going to South African Railways.

The SADCC programme of action through the Mozambique-based Southern African Transport Co-ordination Commission made the Limpopo a priority corridor for rehabilitation and the work started in November 1987. Such is the importance of the line that Zimbabwe started before aid.

Botswana donated US$3.9 million to the project in the form of 147,000 railway sleepers. It is very keen to secure alternative routes to the sea after the transport destabilisation they have suffered due to South Africa.

This includes closing the border through Bophuthatswana to rail transport as well as organising a go-slow for customs and immigration officials on the South African border for road transport.

The town of Chicualacuala does not have its own water supply and so the local population rely on water tanks sent by the NRZ from Zimbabwe.

That morning, the water tankers were due to arrive. A crowd gathered from first light, all waiting with cans big and small to get their water.

Five year old girls struggled with cans almost as big as themselves, stooped old grandmothers staggered away with their loads.

The trickle running down the side of the water truck and dripping onto the railway line was eagerly collected: such is the people's need for water.

This service is provided by the NRZ because they feel it would be impossible to get water to the ZNA troops and their own workers without watering the thousands of people who take refuge from the armed MNR bandits in the towns along the line.

The populations of small railway towns like Mapai, Combomune, Mabalane is expanding rapidly as people pour in from the surrounding bush, attracted by the security that protects the rehabilitation of the rail link.

By day we travelled in steel-plated trollies and by night we feasted in 1940s splendour.

A major problem for the engineers along the line is that their trollies often break down due to old age and the shortage of spare parts. This seems serious in situations where there is a danger of being ambushed.

ZNA protection along the line is much in evidence. Foot patrols regularly check the track trying to prevent the Renamo bandits laying mines. We passed dozens of these patrols on our way down.

The track is littered with the debris of every train blown up along the line from the time the Rhodesian army occupied the area in 1976 till two months ago when the last train carrying workers to rebuild the track was derailed.

NRZ crews with much experience of these conditions are able to repair the line (depending on the damage) in as short a time as an hour-and-a-half. Their morale is high, but the stress of the job is evident on the faces of the engineers as they travel down the line, eyes squinting against the sun trying to anticipate sabotage before it hits them.

We passed the Cabora Bassa power lines on the way to Mapai hanging crazily at all angles, twisted pieces of steel kept upright by cables which connect Mozambique with South Africa - convenient navigation path through featureless bush for Renamo bandits to travel from the northern Transvaal up to Tete Province.

Just outside Mabalane, teams of Zimbabwean and Mozambican workers crowd around the railway track lifting it to knock out old wooden sleepers into place.

They sweat and grunt and sing as sleepers are swung into place down the track to Chokwe. They face mines on the line to and from work every day. Despite this they average a kilometre a day rebuilt with sweat and muscle power.

From Mabalane to Chokwe the bush crowds in on the track and everyone is alert for ambushes. On the way we pass smouldering wooden sleepers burnt out the previous day, in order to derail passing trains and trolleys.

But we had been forewarned of the danger and we pass safely, towing a broken-down trolley that formed a part of our escort.

Arriving in Chokwe across the Limpopo Dam Bridge is a spectacular relief.

Parts of Gaza province have not had rain for three years. We have travelled 250 km through arid, bandit-ridden bush, strewn with derailed railway wagons and engines, each competing with the next to defy gravity and the worst excesses of European surrealism in the shapes they have settled into.

The Chokwe-Limpopo complex is a huge system of irrigated canals providing tens of thousands of hectares of irrigation for maize, rice, tomatoes, and vegetables. Never attacked by bandits, this cornucopia in the midst of one of the most decimated, bandit-ridden areas, features simple huts with 1000 cc motorbikes parked outside. The prosperity of the people is a blessed relief after the abandoned dryness of Gaza.

Wealthy peasant co-operatives, state farms and multinational agribusinesses lie side by side on the rich black earth of the Limpopo River plain.

Lonrho Mozambique is investing massively in irrigation for cotton production and tomato production and canning. Centre pivot irrigation systems dominate the landscape which stretches flat as a billiard table for hundreds of kilometres right down to the sea.

For the Mozambican economy, rail transport of the agricultural wealth of Chokwe is essential to get the food and produce either to the sea or to the drought-stricken areas of Gaza.

From Chokwe we were collected by a CFM train for the ride to Maputo.

We were faced with the dilemma of where to position ourselves on the train for the best pictures. We decided against the armoured truck where Frelimo soldiers were stationed. We placed ourselves on the truck full of sand pushed in front of the locomotive to detonate mines to spare the loco.

Gradually the wealth of Chokwe recedes and the bush crowds around the railway again. Rust on the lines and grass in between the wooden sleepers showed it is infrequently used.

We pass deserted stations with the incoherent scrawl of roving bandits decorating the walls, frameless windows and more walls pock-marked with bullet holes. Empty villages and deserted schools and clinics gaze silently at the passing train. This is the worst area for bandits.

The horizon grows black with smoke.

A Frelimo political commissar who got into the mine detector with us, tells us that the fire was probably started by the bandits since he has information of the presence of bandit groups around the 150 km mark. We pass another deserted station.

Suddenly the rhythmic rattle and squeaking of the train is broken by the crackle of small arms fire.

Abazooka squirts in between the locomotive and the water tank. Joao Costa the Mozambican cameraman, lifts himself up to get a better angle on the shooting. I pull him down as the commissar who has flattened himself like a Manta Ray on the sand, screams "Attack! Attack!"

We ended up with glorious shots of Joao Costa's feet as he fell backwards still filming.

The Limpopo railway project is a vivid example of SADCC at work. Botswana workers making railway sleepers to be laid by Mozambican and Zimbabwean railway workers working together.

To Maputo by train

From Parade Magazine, September 1989

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