Unnmarked graves
Unmarked graves symbolize the South African government's efforts to forget their poor people (typically people of color). After the main characters in the play begin to look for the woman with the red scarf, they find countless unmarked graves. Because none of their graves were marked, their identities were stripped. Their memories were forgotten, and they were allowed to disintegrate into the earth as if they had never walked it, reflecting the poor treatment many people of color experienced in South Africa because of Apartheid-related policies.
The train
The train is symbolic of how South Africans contending with a lack of opportunity, violence, and oppression, could escape their situations. However, even getting to a train was an insurmountable hurdle for many. Many died on their journey to their train toward freedom in another town or country.
Death
Death is a powerful motif throughout The Train Driver. Throughout the play, readers see several South Africans die. First, readers learn that the unnamed mother and her child Roelf had been searching for had died because of Roelf's negligence. Readers also discover the deaths of several other people throughout the play, including Roelf, who digs his grave and is then killed by the gangs. Because of racism and Apartheid policies, racism was unfortunately uncommon in South Africa. Black South Africans were pitted against white South Africans, which caused them to hate each other and inspired them to commit violent acts—acts that often resulted in death.
Food
Food is a symbol of Simon and Roelf's vitality and the energy which humans require to live. Towards the end of the play, Simon and Roelf eat together. They reminisce about their experiences with food and their lives to date—and they use food to help them with that. For Simon and Roelf, food was how the two got to know each other even though they would otherwise not have done so because Simon was Black and Roelf was white.
Kindness
The Train Driver is an allegory for the importance of kindness. When Roelf and Simon first meet, they treat each other unkindly. Simon thinks that Roelf is terrible news because of his skin color, and the same is true of what Roelf thought of Simon. However, once the two got to know each other and know each other's motivations, they treated each other with tremendous respect and kindness. That kindness resulted in Roelf getting closure and Simon that not all white people were terrible. However, their kindness also resulted in consequences for both: Simon lost his job with the railroad, and Roelf died.
