This picture was taken by Santu Mofokeng, a Soweto-born South African photographer, in 1986. It is part of a series of pictures that Mofokeng, then aged 30, took of a spontaneous ritual that had emerged among the workers who took the early morning and late-evening trains from the townships into Johannesburg. Mofokeng, who worked as a darkroom printer in the city, witnessed how his fellow commuters formed a “train church”. In each carriage, community preachers led their packed-in congregation in a raucous Christian service, with sermons, prayers and gospel singing, accompanied by drumming on the train’s sides and the ringing of bells.
Mofokeng’s photos captured what he called the “two most significant features of South African life: the experience of migrancy and the pervasiveness of spirituality”. The sudden religious ecstasy struck him as odd, in the first instance, and then as something profound. “These office cleaners, clerks, factory workers and general labourers enjoined in a cacophony of song and prayer; a catharsis of spirituality in a moving landscape.”
This picture shows the workers leaving the train, buoyed by their morning service, but having to complete their journey, as often happened, by walking along the tracks after the poorly maintained train had broken down. It is included in a retrospective that marks 25 years since the first democratic elections in South Africa. Train Church was the first long-form story Mofokeng made, establishing a tone that dwelt not on headline-making politics or violence but on the everyday resilience of township people. Of his continuing work, he says: “I hold Soweto to be the litmus that I use in order to survey or navigate my way through the world. I feel a peculiar sense of belonging – also grounding – in coming from that space and of contributing to its history.”
Santu Mofokeng – Stories is at Foam gallery, Amsterdam, until 28 April
