TAZARA is the
name of the famous East African railway
connecting the copper-mines of Zambia
with Tanzania’s sea-port of
Dar-es-Salaam. For passengers, it is a
journey of almost three days and two
nights made possible by China’s
first attempt to involve her in a massive
development project on the African
continent.
In April 2007, a TAZARA-Express is
heading from East to West into Africa. It
passes points seemingly without control,
changing its direction time and again
— almost like a runaway train.
However, control rests with a mysterious
stage-manager who is able to direct
action through handy men within the
train’s coaches. Steered as if by
ghostly hands, the train is being
manoeuvred through time and space, even
travelling on far away rail-networks,
thereby touching stations where raw
products and goods are waiting — as
well as ideologies and claims to power
— to be loaded or unloaded by iron
horses of their time.
Whilst driving through tunnels, an
ominous saloon-coach of this spooky train
receives as visitors personalities of
universal history who — sometimes
heckled by co-travellers of the TAZARA
— are made to involve themselves in
a debate of their conduct as actors in
business or politics, having coined in
one way or another the fate of people in
Africa and beyond in the past or in the
future.
The V.I.P.-list of the mysterious
stage-manager does contain such actors of
the world-game as Dag Hammarskjöld, John
D. Rockefeller Jr., Leo Trotsky, Kofi
Annan, Cecil Rhodes, Frantz Fanon, Albert
Schweitzer, Bill Gates ... Knowing
voices, hiding somewhere else on the
train, are using the compartments’
public address system to confront the
V.I.P.s.
Among co-travellers occupying
TAZARA-compartments of the first class
there are:
— four Zambian businesswomen
returning from a shopping spree in Dubai,
their goods rolling with them in a
TAZARA-container
— a travelling tailor from Hong Kong
who used to fit African politicians with
affordable diplomatic suits, now scouting
for African opportunities on behalf of a
Mr. Moon
— a messenger on his way with
valuable vintage-watches to launder money
for dealers in drugs and weapons
— a German entrepreneur who is
convinced that he will construct another
railway line through Africa ...
None of them has a clue that the
mysterious stage-manager has already
determined at what type of rail siding
their journey will come to an end.
The Pointsman, Harare, 15. February 2009
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