Word: sophiatowner
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Dates: during 1955-1955
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...long in Toby Street the army trucks rumbled. Some of the Toby Street folk were not sorry to move, for grim as they are, the iron-roofed brick cottages at Meadowlands are an improvement on much of Sophiatown. But many objected to being moved because they are black. Said Dr. Alfred Xuma, a 60-year-old Sophiatowner who worked his way up from tribal herdsman to a medical degree at the University of Minnesota and the respect of the medical profession: "What happens to people like me? Must "I now be expected to return to my tribal ways...
Operation Sophiatown was neither a pogrom nor a Mau Mau roundup. It was the South African government's new, efficient way of enforcing its policy of apartheid (racial segregation). An all-African community with shops, churches and the only swimming pool for African kids in Johannesburg, Sophiatown is one of three "black spots" on the western side of the city, which the government has recently zoned as "predominantly European." For whites and Negroes to live in such close proximity strikes South Africa's Boer Nationalists as improper and possibly sinful...
...came three days earlier than expected, and was accompanied by a ban on all public gatherings, political or religious, of twelve or more people. "There is reason to apprehend a feeling of hostility," explained the Minister of Justice. But Father Trevor Huddleston, the gentle Anglican missionary who serves Sophiatown's needy, defiantly held his regular church services...
...noon it was raining heavily. Mattresses, tables and clothing piled high on army trucks got drenched alongside their owners. But the rain dampened resistance, and by 6 p.m. 700 Sophiatowners-many from Toby Street-were lining up at Meadowlands to be issued a garbage can, a loaf of bread and six bottles of soda pop. Back in Sophiatown, the armed cops retired, and squads of workmen moved in to tear down the empty houses. All night the sledge hammers pounded while other
Police come to Sophiatown...