Stimela (The Coal Train)

Stimela (The Coal Train)

Hugh Masekela

“Stimela” was first released in 1974 on the album I am Not Afraid while Bra Hugh was still in exile following the political unrest surrounding the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre. It was also featured on Hope in 1994. This is when the song shot into worldwide fame as the album was released right after the first democratic elections in South Africa.

Masekela expresses his own longing for home, he also succeeds in evoking pain and empathy for the subjects of his song; the black men, the labourers, the people on whose backs our South Africa’s wealth is built.

Trains in Africa came with industrialization and therefore breaking up African families as they took workers (men) into cities to be exploited. The train is also a metaphor for hope as well as for a criminal system that has been an integral part of people’s lives and who are still affected by it up to this day.

South Africa does not have steam passenger trains anymore. So a steam train conjures up the past; it evokes nostalgia and represents the working of memory. In the case of “Stimela”, it takes us back to a simpler time, when there was evil and it could be fought simply with a struggle song.

Most importantly Bra Hugh pays homage to immigrants coming from all parts of the continent to work and to protest the apartheid system at the same time. This dichotomy is musically represented throughout the song by the use of percussion, vocals and his trumpet playing as the train passes through the country side and intersects rail road junctions.