November 7, 2006
By Lucille Davie
DR Alfred Bitini Xuma's house in Sophiatown, at present privately owned, is to be bought by the City and turned into a museum to be called the Sophiatown Museum.
Xuma was the president-general of the African National Congress from 1939 to 1949, and a long-time resident of Sophiatown.
Dr AB Xuma's house in Sophiatown
The museum will be part of the Sophiatown Heritage Precinct, an effort launched by the City in 2004 to revive the rich history of the suburb as well as boost the tourist experience of the city.
Sophiatown was established as an outlying suburb for whites in the early 1900s, but the whites abandoned the suburb to blacks in the 1920s. It developed into a vibrant cosmopolitan community in the 1940s and '50s, producing many talented musicians, writers and artists.
In 1955 the apartheid government reclassified the suburb as a white suburb, and over the next eight years systemically broke up the close-knit community and removed most of them to Meadowlands in Soweto. Some 65 000 people were eventually removed.
The houses were demolished, and working class whites were moved in. The suburb was renamed Triomf, a cheap swipe to a supposed triumph of whites over blacks.
The Xuma house was one of several buildings that escaped the bulldozers. It was declared a national monument in 1998. In February this year, when the suburb was renamed Sophiatown, the Executive Mayor Amos Masondo unveiled a City heritage plaque on the wall of the house, acknowledging Xuma and his wife, Madie Beatrice Hall, an African-American social worker who served as president of the ANC Women's League from 1943 to 1949.
Other buildings that survived were the Christ the King Anglican Church in Ray Street, the St Joseph's Home in Good Street, also a national monument, and another house in Toby Street, believed to have belonged to a prominent Indian family. This house stands empty, in dilapidated condition.
Dr Xuma was a well-known figure in Sophiatown. He was born in the former Transkei in 1893, where he spent his childhood looking after his father's sheep.
Xuma studied at two universities in the US, and went on to specialise in gynaecology, obstetrics and surgery at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He obtained his medical degree from the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He returned to South Africa and started to practise as a doctor in Sophiatown in 1927.
In 1934 he built a large, modern house in the suburb. With three bedrooms and two garages, it was considered a mansion in a suburb of modest houses, often with shacks bulging from their backyards.
Under his leadership, the ANC introduced a more effective branch structure, and provincial congresses were established. In 1943 he introduced a new constitution which gave membership to people of all races, as well as giving women equal rights in the organisation.
He co-operated with the Indian National Congress, uniting Indians and blacks in the fight against apartheid. But by 1949 the young leaders of the Youth League, including Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo, were becoming impatient with his moderate approach. In 1949 he was replaced as ANC president by JS Moroka.
After fighting against the forced removal of people from the western areas, he was finally forced to vacate his house in 1959, and moved to Dube in Soweto.
He died at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in 1962.
Eric Itzkin, deputy director of immovable heritage, says the Johannesburg Property Company is evaluating the property at the moment. As the house is at present zoned for residential use, it would have to be re-zoned to house the museum.
Itzkin says there has been a change in perceptions, perhaps related to the renaming of the suburb, which has resulted in a growing commitment to buy the house and use it for the benefit of the City and its residents.
"There is now a purpose for the house – it deserves to be further developed," he said.
The house was sold to the present owner in 2003.
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