Going to work: 3:30am, Wolwekraal-Marabastad bus, standing passengers have slumped to the floor

Goldblatt’s photographic essay on homeland transport, The Transported of KwaNdebele, 1983–1984, illuminates the oppressive geographic displacement imposed by apartheid. Commissioned for the Second Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty and Development in Southern Africa, these photographs depict the commuting workers of KwaNdebele, who spend between 3 1⁄2 and 8 hours each day traveling to and from their jobs in the metropolitan city of Pretoria. As apartheid policy required the segregation of black South Africans in tribal Bantustans or homelands, millions were forcibly relocated to remote, rural settlement camps that lacked employment opportunities. Heavily subsidized bus and rail services were established to facilitate the movement of workers between these camps and their workplaces in the country’s white economic centers. Goldblatt’s images follow KwaNdebele’s nightriders through their daily ritual of interminable, overcrowded commutes on dusty, rutted roads and render visible their physical and psychological experiences of alienation and dislocation. The bus ride alone speaks powerfully to the abhorrent conditions which so profoundly concern Goldblatt.

Information retrieved from: https://www.galleriesnow.net/shows/david-goldblatt-the-transported-of-kwandebele-a-south-african-odyssey-1983-1984-ex-offenders-at-the-scene-of-crime-2008-2015/