February 13, 2006
By Neil Fraser
I WAS disappointed that I was unable to be at the re-re-naming ceremony of Triomf on Saturday, 11 February. While most people ignore the name, preferring to use its historic designation, Sophiatown, the re-re-naming ceremony is far more than merely symbolic. It is a returning of dignity to the place and people, a dignity they were cruelly robbed of in 1955.
Sophiatown was originally named after Sophia, the wife of Herman Tobiansky, an investor who bought 237 acres of land in 1899 to the west of the then mining town. The township was surveyed and laid out in 1903.
Some of the streets still reflect the names of his children, Edith, Gerty, Bertha, Toby and Sol. Others were Victoria Street after the then queen, and Edward and Coronation streets after the coronation of Edward VII a few years previously.
Tobiansky's dream was to establish "a European suburb in the west" and he initially sold stands to a number of white buyers. Then a bombshell was dropped – the council announced that it had decided to establish a sewage disposal works right next to his ground and buyers dried up.
Undeterred, Tobiansky started selling plots to Africans, coloureds and Indians, who had few options or alternatives for accommodation. This was a freehold township – buyers were not subject to the controls of the Town Council. Thus the homes that were built were an eclectic variety, ranging from large to small, from corrugated iron shacks to brick cottages, all built according to the tastes, cultures and financial ability of the homeowners.
Expansion
The population of the freehold township grew steadily: 700 by 1913, escalating to 10 000 by 1923 and then, in the 1930s, the population appeared to increase exponentially. This was because of a huge influx of people who had been displaced from other areas of the city as a result of the Slums Act of 1934, as well as young people seeking employment in Joburg's rapidly growing manufacturing sector.
The poor who owned properties took in boarders to pay off their bonds, so they built shacks in their backyards and the township rapidly became overcrowded. By 1953 the population was thought to be about 70 000.
The late anti-apartheid cleric Trevor Huddleston wrote about his beloved Sophiatown: "Sometimes looking up at Sophiatown from Western Native Township, across the main road, I have felt that I was looking at an Italian Village somewhere in Umbria.
"For you do ‘look up' at Sophiatown, and in the evening light, across the blue-grey haze of smoke from braziers and chimneys, against a saffron sky, you see close-packed, red-roofed little houses.
"You see on the farthest skyline the tall and shapely blue gum trees … You see, moving up and down the hilly streets, people in groups; people in colourful clothes; people who, when you come up to them, are children playing, dancing and standing round the braziers … In the evening, towards the early South African sunset, there is very little of the slum about Sophiatown."
History
Reading the history of the place, one is, however, struck by the dichotomy it presented. On the one hand it was a place of great poverty and suffering and was somewhat seedy, with plenty of the violence that overcrowding begets. On the other, it was a unique community born out of the struggle to survive and, as one report describes, "a culture of shebeens, mbaqanga music and beer brewing".
Writer Can Themba, a resident of Sophiatown, described drinking in a local shebeen in his book, The Will to Die: "The table was spired with bottles of brandy, gin and beer, and we were at the stage of high discourse, much like the majestic demons in the burning pit. For a moment, as I looked at those young men around me, the luxury of a mild flood of conscience swept over me.
"They had all at one time or another had visions: to escape their environment; to oppose and overcome their context; to evade and out-distance destiny by hard work and sacrifice, by education and native ability, by snatching from the table of occupation some of the chance crumbs of the high-chaired culture.
"Lord, it struck me, what a treasure of talent I had here in front of me. Must they bury their lives with mine like this under a load of Sophiatown bottles?"
Apart from its shebeens, Sophiatown was certainly known for its music and its musicians, but also for its gangs and gangsters. Its own sound was developed, a combination of African melody and American swing and jazz known as Tsaba-tsaba, which later evolved into "kwela".
The gangs were the Gestapo, the Americans, the Berliners and the Vultures. The latter was a child-gang started and headed by poet Don Mattera, today one of the most respected sons of Sophiatown. It was also a place that was home to notable South Africans – Dr Xuma, the leader of the ANC whose house still stands and is occupied by another doctor, artist Gerard Sekoto, and many others.
Forced removals
In the end, Themba's "treasure of talent" didn't have to take a decision about burying their lives under a load of Sophiatown bottles. The decision wasn't theirs to take. In 1953, five years after the National Party came to power, the government scheduled the removal of the people and the destruction of all homes in the area.
A massive protest campaign was organised by the ANC and the people of Sophiatown were mobilised against the removals. But, two years later, in the early hours of 9 February 1955, a 2 000 strong detachment of police armed with rifles and knobkerries moved in, two days earlier than the publicised date for removals to start.
Everyone was caught off guard and resistance crumbled. Over a number of years about 65 000 people were moved to Meadowlands, Lenasia, what is now Westbury, Noordgesig, Orlando East and various parts of Soweto.
Don Mattera in his poem The Day They Came for Our House, wrote:
Armed with bulldozers
they came
to do a job
nothing more
just hired killers.
We gave way
There was nothing we could do
Although the bitterness stung in us
And in the earth around us.
Blue-collar Afrikaans-speaking families were moved in and the government's "victory" was celebrated in the crass name change to Triomf, a name change that took place with no consultation. It was simply foisted on the city and its people.
Real victory
So the return of the name Sophiatown is an important milestone in our journey towards democracy. It is sad that so many of those whose lives were destroyed 50-plus years ago are not here to celebrate the real victory with us. But they are not forgotten.
"Sophiatown! It is not your physical beauty that makes you so loveable; not that soft line of colour which sometimes seems to strike across the greyness of your streets; not the splendour of the evening sky which turns your drabness into gold – it is none of these things, It is your people." - Trevor Huddleston, Naught for your Comfort
Go well, Neil
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