Can Themba's is a seminal short story that provides a visceral depiction of life for black South Africans under the apartheid regime . Set during a Monday morning commute from Dube Station to Johannesburg, the story uses the confined, chaotic space of a third-class train carriage as a microcosm of a society fractured by systemic oppression and moral decay. Plot Summary
The story feels claustrophobic, mirroring the physical experience of the train car. Key Characters Dube Train Short Story By Can Themba
There is a certain hour on the Soweto line, just before the six o’clock stampede, when the Dube train becomes a beast. Not the iron-and-steel kind they write about in the engineering manuals. No. This beast has a pulse. It breathes the thick, sweet-sour breath of a thousand souls crushed into carriages meant for cattle. " The Dube Train " Can Themba's is
The central philosophical tension of the story is between the traditional African concept of ubuntu ("I am because we are") and the brutal individualism required to survive the city. In the morning, everyone is selfish. By evening, they remember they are neighbors. Themba suggests that apartheid tried to kill ubuntu, but the Dube train—a place of enforced intimacy—accidentally preserved it. Key Characters There is a certain hour on
An enormous man sitting opposite the narrator, whose initial passivity represents the suppressed power of the black working class.
: A large, quiet man who eventually acts when the other men fail. His reaction is not necessarily heroic, but a "bestial" response to the violence surrounding him.