In the event, and throughout most of the 20th century, the southern African states, and more especially most of the mine owners - whose primary, if not sole, loyalties in terms of culture, lifestyle, wealth creation and choice of domicile upon early retirement lay in the northern hemisphere - did better than hold black wages; they managed, over 50 years, to lower them continuously.

The Chamber of Mines, intent on ensuring favourable balance sheets and dividends for its risk-averse investors spread around the developed world, saw no reason for its having to absorb the cost of running an international rail service that amounted to a third of the overall cost of labour recruitment.

For half a century, African miners on the up-train were never referred to as ‘miners’ but as ‘East Coast Boys’; the living dead and terminally ill Mozambicans on the down-train were never referred to as ‘patients’ but as ‘rejects’ or ‘sick boys’; and the Sul do Save migrants never qualified as ‘passengers’ but were ‘special fares’ or ‘Bantu’. Racism, a product of the mind, perverts the thinking of the oppressors and the oppressed alike.

The inhabitants of the Sul do Save, now one of the poorest regions on earth, may have entered the modern world poor, but the mining revolution in South Africa helped keep them and their descendants poor.

All South Africans, but more especially those who owned and own the coal- and gold-mining industries, need to acknowledge that much of the country’s past prosperity, wealth and relatively advanced infrastructure were built on the backs of black labour pushed and pulled out of colonial Mozambique.