Through the 1940’s and 50’s, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, the region of Sophiatown was a thriving center of music, literature, and politics. The period, known as the Sophiatown Renaissance, has been compared to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s. As well as a center of arts, Sophiatown was a multicultural neighborhood in which blacks, Indians, and Chinese all lived together. Many whites, like young Nadine Gordimer, also gravitated to Sophiatown, breaking the apartheid tradition of racial and cultural segregation. Sophiatown was one of the rare urban townships in apartheid South Africa where blacks were allowed to own land. They had broader authority than in other urban areas and therefore more collective sovereignty. It’s likely for this reason that the area became a center of culture and political activism.
Throughout Sophiatown were many shebeens, illegal or informal pubs that became venues for more than just drinking and entertainment. The shebeens were sites of political discussion, collaboration, and the development of much anti-apartheid resistance. Nelson Mandela and other ANC members were among those who gathered in Sophiatown to develop their anti-apartheid politics.
In 1954, citing the Group Areas Act which compelled different racial groups to live separately in South Africa, the apartheid government, led by the National Party, announced the planned relocation of all 65,000 residents of Sophiatown out into the county regions. While the government claimed that whites of Johannesburg were complaining about the encroachment of this mostly black community, it is likely that the government was threatened by the cultural power of Sophiatown, its racial mixing, as well as many of the strong political actors such as Mandela who were converging and organizing in Sophiatown.
The date of the removals was announced and in the month leading up, the ANC and Indian Congress joined forces and organized large protests in Sophiatown against the removal plans. Mandela spoke publicly in Sophiatown’s Freedom Square, telling the crowds to resist forced clearance. It was here that Mandela famously spoke in favor of violent resistance against the violence of the apartheid regime.
When the removals happened, however, the resistance did not materialize. For it was three days before the removals were to begin, in the middle of the night on February 9, 1955, that over 2,000 military police armed with rifles, machine guns, and clubs and mounted on horseback surprised the people of Sohpiatown, entering homes as they slept and forcefully dragging them out. In the proceeding days, Mandela and the ANC called for their people not to resist as it could only end in bloodshed. Instead, the population of Sophiatown was removed in its entirety. Neighborhoods were splintered, friends and community networks torn apart, and a unique multicultural, thriving enclave was wiped out.
The infrastructure of Sophiatown was razed to the ground and on top of it, homes for a white-only community were built. While the destruction of Sophiatown was seen as a failure for the ANC in their battle against apartheid, it became a rallying point for a more focused effort in their fierce resistance against the white regime.
