Sophiatown , also known as Sof'town or Kofifi, is a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. Sophiatown was a poor multi-racial area and a black cultural hub that was destroyed under apartheid. It produced some of South Africa's most famous writers, musicians, politicians and artists, like Father Huddleston, Can Themba, Bloke Modisane, Es'kia Mphahlele, Arthur Maimane, Todd Matshikiza, Nat Nakasa, Casey Motsisi, Dugmore Boetie, Miriam Makeba and Lewis Nkosi.
Rebuilt as a whites-only area under the name of Triomf ("Triumph") in the 1960s, in 2006 it was officially returned to its original name. Sophiatown was one of the oldest black areas in Johannesburg and its destruction represented the human rights violations in South Africa under apartheid.
History
Sophiatown was originally part of the Waterfall farm. Over time it included the neighbouring areas of Martindale and Newclare. It was purchased by a speculator, Hermann Tobiansky, in 1897. He acquired or so west of the centre of Johannesburg. The private leasehold township was surveyed in 1903 and divided into almost 1700 small stands. The township was named after Tobiansky's wife, Sophia, and some of the streets were named after his children Toby, Gerty, Bertha and Victoria. Before the enactment of the Natives Land Act, 1913, black South Africans also had freehold rights in the area, and bought properties in the suburb. The distance from the city centre was seen as disadvantageous, and after the City of Johannesburg built a sewage plant nearby, the area seemed even less attractive. Most of the wealthy people had moved out by 1920. By the late 1940s Sophiatown had a population of nearly 54,000 Africans, 3,000 Coloureds, 1,500 Indians and 686 Chinese, both owners and renters. Sophiatown became the home of a rapidly expanding black workforce, as it was convenient and close to town. It was one of the few urban areas where black people were allowed to own land. It had the only swimming pool for black children in Johannesburg.
As the land never belonged to the Johannesburg municipality, it was never developed through municipal housing schemes, which in black areas usually involved row upon row of "matchbox" houses, based on uniformity and lack of character.
Forced removals It was adjacent to white working-class areas, such as Westdene and Newlands, and known for high levels of crime and poverty. The seregationist state viewed it as a slum, and believed that it was too close to white areas. From 1944, i.e., even before apartheid, the Johannesburg City Council planned to move the non-white population out of the Western Areas of Johannesburg, including Sophiatown. After the election victory of the National Party in 1948, relocation plans were debated at the level of national politics. Under the Group Areas Act and the Immorality Amendment Act, both of 1950, as well as the Natives Resettlement Act of 1954, the national state was empowered to stop people of different races residing together. This allowed systematic urban segregation and the destruction of mixed areas.
When the Sophiatown removals scheme was promulgated, Sophiatown residents united to protest against the forced removals, creating the slogan "Ons dak nie, ons phola hier" (roughly, "we won't move"). As one of the oldest black settlements in Johannesburg, it held an almost symbolic importance for its black inhabitants. Figures like Nelson Mandela were key to the resistance. Some whites, like Father Trevor Huddleston, Helen Joseph and Ruth First also played an important role.
Despite a vigorous ANC protest campaign and worldwide publicity, the removal of Sophiatown began on 9 February 1955 under the Western Areas Removal Scheme. In the early hours, 2,000 policemen, armed with handguns, rifles, and clubs known as knobkierries, forcefully moved the first batch of black families from Sophiatown to Meadowlands, Soweto, on a large track of land that the government had purchased in 1953. In the years that followed, other blacks were removed, and the Coloured evicted to Eldorado Park outside of Johannesburg, in addition to Westbury, Noorgesig and other coloured townships; the Indians were moved to Lenasia; and the Chinese moved to central Johannesburg. Over eight years Sophiatown was flattened and removed from the maps of Johannesburg. It was replaced with new white suburb named Triomf (Triumph).
During the forced removals, some displaced individuals found temporary shelter and support at the Albert Street Methodist Church, Johannesburg, which became a notable sanctuary for anti-apartheid activists and the homeless.
Triomf After the forced removals and demolition, the area was rebuilt as renamed "Triomf" —Afrikaans for Triumph—by the government. The social engineers of apartheid tried to create a suburb for the white working-class, and Triomf was predominantly populated by poorer working-class Afrikaners. Marlene van Niekerk's award-winning novel Triomf focuses on the daily lives of a family of poor whites in this era.
Restoration of the name Sophiatown The Johannesburg City Council took the decision in 1997 to reinstate the old name Sophiatown for the suburb. On 11 February 2006, the process finally came to fruition when Mayor Amos Masondo changed the name of Triomf back to Sophiatown. Today, Sophiatown again has a racially mixed population.
Geography and geology
Sophiatown is located on one of Johannesburg's ridges called Melville Koppies. Melville Koppies lies on the Kaapvaal craton, which dates from three billion years ago. The Koppies lie at the base of lithified sediments in the form of conglomerate, quartzite, shale, and siltstone. It represents the first sea shores and shallow beds of an ancient sea. It also forms part of the lowest level of one of the world's most well known geological features, the Witwatersrand Supergroup. Several fairly narrow layers of gravel, deposited quite late in the sequence, and bearing heavy elements, made the Witwatersrand Supergroup famous. These are the gold-bearing conglomerates of the main reefs. Melville Koppies represents in microcosm most of the features of the Witwatersrand Supergroup. What it does not have is gold-bearing rock. The gold occurs millions of years later, and several kilometres higher up, in the sequence. In the last 1,000 years, black Iron Age immigrants arrived and remains of their kraal walls can be found in the area.
The Melville Koppies Nature Reserve is a Johannesburg City Heritage Site.
Culture
Early life in Sophiatown Sophiatown, unlike other townships in South Africa, was a freehold township, which meant that it was one of the rare places in South African urban areas where blacks were allowed to own land. This was land that never belonged to the Johannesburg municipality, and so it never developed through municipal housing schemes. The houses were built according to people's ability to pay, tastes, and cultural background. Some houses were built of brick and had four or more rooms; some were much smaller. Others were built like homes in the rural areas; others still were single room shacks put together with corrugated iron and scrap sheet metal. The majority of the families living in Sophiatown were tenants and sub-tenants. Eight or nine people lived in a single room and the houses hid backyards full of shanties built of cardboard and flattened kerosene cans, since many Black property owners in Sophiatown were poor. In order to pay back the mortgages on their properties, they had to take in paying tenants.
Sophiatown residents had a determination to construct a respectable lifestyle in the shadow of a state that was actively hostile to such ambitions. A respectable lifestyle rested on the three pillars of religious devotion, reverence for formal education, and a desire for law and order.
People struggled to survive together starvation was a serious problem, and a rich culture based on shebeens (informal and mostly illegal pubs), mbaqanga music, and beer-brewing developed. The shebeens were one of the main forms of entertainment. People came to the shebeens not only for skokiaan or baberton (illegally self-made alcoholic beverages), but to talk about their daily worries, their political ideas and their fears and hopes. In these shebeens the politicians tried to influence others and get them to conform to their form of thinking. If one disagreed he immediately became suspect and was classified as a police informer.
These two contrasting depictions of Sophiatown exist simultaneously: one describing a distinct community, and the other depicting a town marked by crime and safety risks.
Arts and literature
The cultural process was somehow intensified in Sophiatown, as in Soho, the Greenwich Village, the Quartier Latin or Kreuzberg. It was akin to what Harlem was to New York in the 1920s Harlem Renaissance and is sometimes referred to as the Sophiatown renaissance.
The musical King Kong, sponsored by the Union of South African Artists, is described as the ultimate achievement and final flowering of Sophiatown multi-racial cultural exploits in the 1950s. King Kong is based on the life of Sophiatown legend Ezekiel Dlamini, who gained popularity as a famous boxer, notorious extrovert, a bum, and a brawler. The King Kong musical depicted the street life, the illicit shebeens, the violence, and something approximating the music of the township: jazz, penny whistles and the work songs of the black miners. When King Kong premiered in Johannesburg, Miriam Makeba the vocalist of the Manhattan Brothers, played in the female lead role. The musical later went to London's West End for two years.
One of the boys, Hugh Masekela at St Peter's School, told Father Huddleston of his discovery of the music of Louis Armstrong. Huddleston found a trumpet for him and as the interest in making music caught on among the other boys, the Huddleston Jazz Band was formed. Masekela did not stay very long in Sophiatown. He was in the orchestra of King Kong and then made his own international reputation.
Images of Sophiatown were initially built up in literature by a generation of South African writers: Can Themba, Bloke Modisane, Es'kia Mphahlele, Arthur Maimane, Todd Matshikiza, Nat Nakasa, Casey Motsisi, Dugmore Boetie, and Lewis Nkosi who all lived in Sophiatown at various stages during the 1950s. They all shared certain elements of a common experience: education at St Peter's School and Fort Hare University, living in Sophiatown, working for Drum magazine, exile, banning under the Suppression of Communism Act and for many the writing of an autobiography.
Later, images of Sophiatown could be found in Nadine Gordimer's novels, Miriam Makeba's ghostwritten autobiography and Trevor Huddleston's Naught for your comfort. Alan Paton also details the social, cultural and political trajectory of Sophiatown in his 1983 novel, Ah, but Your Land Is Beautiful.Paton, Alan. Ah, but Your Land is Beautiful. Penguin Books. 1983. pp. 111-116.
Marlene van Niekerk's novel Triomf focuses on the suburb Triomf and recounts the daily lives of a family of poor white Afrikaners. The book has been turned into a movie called Triomf, which won the Best South African Movie award in 2008.
Crime and gangsterism Crime and violence were a reality of urban life and culture in Sophiatown. The poverty, misery, violence and lawlessness of the city led to the growth of many gangs. Sections of society frowned on gangsterism as anti-social behaviour and gangsters like Kortboy and Don Mattera were despised by many as "anti social", but were also sometimes perceived as “social bandits” that were part of the resistance to apartheid.