Abstract:
‘A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND
WORDS,’ or so the saying goes.
The inheritances of this phrase are attributed
to a number of sources, including
an ancient Chinese proverb, Napoleon
Bonaparte (who remarked that ‘a good
sketch is better than a long speech’) and,
more accurately it seems, to Fred R Barnard,
in the advertising trade journal
Printers’ Ink, on 8 December 1921 (which
carried an advertisement entitled, ‘One
Look is Worth A Thousand Words’.) The
inherent meaning of these statements
is powerfully evoked in photographs of
Zuid Afrikaansche Spoorwegmaatschappij
(NZASM) infrastructure, completed in
the late 1800s (i.e. 1883 to 1900) in the
then Zuid Afrikaanshe Republiek (ZAR)
‘The formation of the NZASM was
necessitated by the increase in economic
activity in the ZAR, after the discovery of
gold on the Witwatersrand. The massive
competition for rail transport charges, between
the various republics, had by then
already set in motion attempts by the ZAR
to seek independent access to a seaport’
(Barker, 2014:113). The company was established
around 1890 and set about the
construction of a number of railway lines
– most important being the Eastern Line
from Pretoria to Delagoa Bay (now Maputo),
which was completed in 1894.
