The historic settlement of Sophiatown (also known as Kofifi in township slang) was a melting pot of culture, music and arts where people of different races lived together in apartheid South Africa. Street-smart residents likened it to Harlem in New York because of its vibrant atmosphere.
Located 10 km from Johannesburg CBD, Sophiatown’s founder Herman Tobiansky had aspirations of a ‘pleasant, white suburb’, until the Town Council announced plans to locate the city’s sewerage disposal facilities beside it.
Tobiansky swiftly sold off plots of land to anyone who would buy it, and Sophiatown became the only urban area in Johannesburg where black people owned freehold land and bought property. Blacks, Whites, Indians and Coloureds lived together freely, making it a unique symbol of unity in a racially divided country.
Life, Lived Out Loud
Every weekend the bustling streets of Sophiatown were lined with men and women dressed to kill to attend live music concerts, beauty pageants or the theatre.
Sophiatown, like many black townships, sought solace and a sense of expression in the arts during the turbulent years of oppression.
All the entertainment and live music usually occurred at shebeens (informal beer halls). These were places mostly run by strong-willed, entrepreneurial women known as ‘shebeen queens’. Under the apartheid laws black people were not permitted to sell beer or spirits, but shebeen queens secretly sold liquor under the noses of police.
Chaos would erupt when police raided shebeens, confiscating alcohol before arresting those involved. Alcohol would be quickly hidden at the first sound of approaching police vans and the gathering of people would continue under the innocent guise of a music concert.
Sophiatown was a harsh environment, beset with poverty and suffering, yet it developed its own rich character, history and close-knit sense of community. Many who lived there proudly recall that ‘t he most talented African men and women from all walks of life - in spite of the hardships they had to encounter - came from Sophiatown.’
A Community Turned to Rubble
The Group Areas Act of 1950 made it illegal for people of different races to live together. Defiant, vibrant Sophiatown soon became the first victim of the apartheid government’s new strategy to systematically destroy multiracial areas, so called ‘black spots’, which were seen as breeding grounds for sedition and black intellectuals.
One morning in February 1955, the suburb was besieged by armed police forcing people to move out of their homes and demolishing the houses. Ex-Sophiatown resident and poet Don Mattera describes the agony of people forcibly removed:
‘We gave way
There was nothing we could do
Although the bitterness stung in us
And in the earth around us.’
“The day they came for our house”
Erasing History
People were loaded into trucks with the little they could salvage of their belongings and relocated to various areas according to the colour of their skin .
At the time of the removals, the church was led by English-born Archbishop Trevor Huddleston. Huddleston, one of the icons of resistance against the repressive laws of apartheid, fought tirelessly to save Sophiatown. At the height of the removals, he pled in vain to England for help in stopping the evictions.
Part of the 65 000-strong black community was moved to Meadowlands in Soweto, ‘coloureds’ to an area today known as Westbury and Indians to Lenasia. The community was not given a chance to contest the removal decision; those who resisted were thrown into prison and lost their possessions. The removals continued for the next 8 years. This effectively wiped Sophiatown off the map of Johannesburg.
A Hollow Victory
After all the buildings had been flattened, a new whites-only suburb called Triomf (Afrikaans for ‘triumph’) was built. The place was occupied by the Afrikaans middle class, living in newly-built homes.
This exclusively Afrikaans community continued to exist there until the Group Areas Act was repealed in 1991. After that Afrikaans- and English-speaking ‘coloured’ people moved in, but very few of Sophiatown’s original residents went back.
The Return of Kofifi
Under the new democratic government Triomf was re-named Sophiatown, a process that was concluded in 2006. Today Sophiatown is a once again a buzzing suburb with multiracial residents who are determined to reclaim its former glory.
The Anglican Church of Christ the King in Ray Street is the only original structure that survived the demolition. Today at the church, visitors can learn more about the history of Sophiatown as told through the recollections and lives of its former residents.
At the corner of Good and Herman Streets, a memorial has been established in honour of Huddleston. The Trevor Huddleston CR Memorial Centre runs a museum specialising in the history of Sophiatown with compelling pictures of the brutalities of apartheid. This is one of the few museums that capture the heritage of Sophiatown before the removals.
The original Kofifi may be gone forever, but its spirit still lives on in the new racially integrated South Africa.
The images Waiting for trucks (1959) and We won’t move (1955) are kind permission and copyright Jurgen Schadeberg 2009. All the photographer’s rights remain reserved. For more information go to: www.jurgenschadeberg.com
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