Diverse city, wiped out by Apartheid, returns

Alexandra Zavis

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Strains of jazz echoed through suburban streets Saturday as Sophiatown’s former residents returned with a boisterous parade to reclaim the legendary black cultural hub wiped off the map under apartheid.

The destruction of one of Johannesburg’s oldest black settlements more than 50 years ago came to represent the callousness and brutality of white racist rule. The new white suburb that emerged from the rubble of Sophiatown was named ‘Triomf,’ Afrikaans for triumph.

There was dancing, cheering, ululating and the odd tear Saturday as scattered residents returned to see Johannesburg Mayor Amos Masondo unveil a sign officially restoring the neighborhood’s original name in bold black letters.

“‘Triomf’ meant the victory of white supremacy,’” Masondo told more than 500 people gathered under a white marquee in the heart of Sophiatown. “Let me hasten to add, however, that Sophiatown was never erased from the hearts and minds of its people.”

Despite its overcrowded squalor, the close-knit community was a place where black, white, Indian and Chinese mingled freely on Johannesburg’s western edge, It produced some of the country’s most famous writers, musicians, politicians and gangsters.

International jazz stars like Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba cut their teeth at its Odeon Cinema and in the many illegal taverns. A magazine called Drum was a vehicle for emerging black writers like Can Themba, Lewis Nkosi and Es’kia Mphahlele.

Elizabeth Kallesen, a former resident, could not contain her excitement as jazz legends from Sophiatown’s heyday in the 1940s and 1950s took to the stage. While others swayed and clapped their hands in time, she leapt to the floor and started swinging her hips like the young tap dancer she once was.

“I feel I can dance the whole day because they are singing the songs from Sophiatown,” the 64-year-old said with a grin.

Old men in sharp suits and women in flowing skirts and berets hugged each other and reminisced about old times, when Sophiatown was the pulse of black urban culture.

Led by a police band and twirling dancers, they paraded through the old neighborhood, pausing at a few buildings that escaped the bulldozers to lay wreaths and unveil a memorial plaque.

A few current residents also emerged from their homes and were drawn into the festivities.

Among them were 37-year-old Stander Kotze, a struggling white mechanic, and his two young children. Kotze, who grew up in the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement, hesitated to come but was delighted by what he saw.

“You get spoon-fed to hate other people just because they are different,” he said. “But this is change. It’s beautiful and it can only get better.”

Sophiatown was one of the first settlements broken up under the hated Group Areas Act, which separated the races into exclusive areas, reserving the best for whites.

The now-governing African National Congress and its Communist Party ally helped mobilize a desperate campaign to fight the forced removals that was brought to the world’s attention by the late Anglican archbishop Trevor Huddleston. But one rainy morning in February 1955, 2,000 police moved in with guns and clubs.

“My heart was so sore when I saw the police, they made me cry,” Kallesen recalled. “They said: ‘Get out. Get out! Take your things and go.’”

Residents were forced to load their possessions onto trucks and dumped in a new township called Meadowlands, later incorporated into South Africa’s most famous township, Soweto. There bleak rows of roughly constructed two-room houses awaited them.

Over the next eight years, the bustling neighborhood that was home to more than 60,000 people was flattened.

More than a decade after apartheid’s end, Sophiatown still occupies a cherished place in South African memory. It has been the subject of books, films and an acclaimed musical.

The city of Johannesburg decided to return the suburb to its original name in 1997, but local authorities were unable to meet the costs at the time and it took nine years to complete the process.

“Many of our friends were scattered to different places,” said Justice Makgatlha, 75, a former altar boy at Sophiatown’s Church of Christ the King. “It is a beautiful way to remember what it used to be, people all together.”

(Associated Press)