70th anniversary of the Sophiatown forced removals – “Kofifi”

Opinion Piece by Mr Khwezi Mpumlwana, Resistance and Liberation Heritage Route Programme Manager at the National Heritage Council

The ink had barely dried on the US executive statement alleging that South Africa is “doing terrible things and taking land from certain groups,” when the Don Mattera Foundation marked 70 years of the inhumane Sophiatown forced removals on the 8th and 9th of February, commemorated in the garden of Dr Alfred Bitini Xuma’s house through an exhibition and commemorative walk in and around Kofifi and Meadowlands.

The legendary suburb embodied the resistance and possibilities of urban black life under segregation as one of the few areas in Johannesburg where black people were allowed to own land. Following the forced removals, the area was renamed “Triomph” / Triumph and had become an area for “White People only’ in terms of the Group Areas Act.

Dr AB Xuma’s house is one of the few that survived the terrible demolitions, even though he had lost it to some white family, like all the other properties.

The subtheme of the commemoration was, “When they came for my home.”  The audience was treated to both heartrending and intriguing story telling by families and survivors from those terrible days.  A superlative educational exhibition takes the viewers down memory lane and presents Sophiatown in its glory and gory through the footsteps of Don Mattera, and the many dimensions of his childhood, youth and adulthood.

The 1950 Group Areas Act decreed the separation and destruction of “mixed communities”, District Six, Sophiatown were among these.  It would appear that back in those days, white people never had to be moved from areas, if an area is deemed to be a black spot, or too close to a white community, it was then moved far away, and a buffer mechanism was created.  The Group Areas Act came on the back of the 1913 Natives Land Act, whose impact on taking African land away was evocatively documented by Sol Plaatjie in Native Life in South Africa and later by Advocate Ngcukaithobi.  The struggle for land has been a most significant feature of the resistance and liberation struggle.

Sophiatown is often recounted by its survivors as a near-magical place that was a convenient walking distance from the centre of Johannesburg and “every” other good thing, a flourishing diverse neighbourhood, with a vibrant creative and cultural calendar, that produced some of the countries’ most amazing jazz artists, writers, journalists, thought leaders of every area of life.   The survivors also reflected on the life urban gang warfare, differences between tenants and landlords, merchants and customers.

The apartheid minority government came down hard and destroyed this community with bulldozers and police, chased the people away to far flung segregated areas like Meadowlands, Dube, Eldorado Park and others.  The new areas were lesser in size, worse off in quality of life, disorienting in many more ways than one.

The pain of having homes and community destroyed so violently seared the hearts of everyone sitting in Dr AB Xuma’s garden former home on the day of the commemoration.  Speaker after speaker testified to the horrific childhood memories of the destruction of a vibrant community, loss of homes, happy childhoods, loss of friendships, parents who died of heartbreak; destroyed opportunities.  The Mattera family had owned busses, other families had income from real estate, others from commercial trading or entertainment businesses.  All of this was gone in a moment as a result of the forced removals.

The Don Mattera Foundation is a one-time beneficiary of the National Heritage Council’s (NHC) Funding, for the production of one of his anthologies – “The Child,” which features an amazing collection of new and some previously published poems, and promises to be a timeless collection, celebrating children and reflecting on their innocence and vulnerability.

Commemorations like these demonstrate the immense potential for NHC to champion the heritage of diverse South Africans, working with the directly affected communities. The recollections of the forced removals and community destruction, providing a sobering rectification of the global untruths about who is or was the recipient of the really terrible actions.  The pain of those communities demonstrates how heritage can be a force for seeking redress, for seeking equity and for achieving closure and reconciliation.

Don Mattera, a grandson of an Italian immigrant and a Xhosa Griqua grandmother, a friend of the NHC, a poet, peacemaker, former vultures gang member, former member of the ANC youth league, Black Consciousness Movement, founder of many organisations including the Congress of South African Writers, Union of Black Writers, poet, prolific writer, community builder, polyglot was the focus of the day’s event.

The story of his life, the neighbours ‘memories of him, extracts from his writings offered a telescope down memory lane of his amazing journey and the community he came from.  His fierce commitment to non-racialism, to the idea of one human race was a dominant theme.

This non-racialism is consistent with the story of Mattera senior – the Italian grandfather, who himself, could have retained his house under cover of whiteness, but he chose loyalty to his mixed heritage family he had founded.

The Don Mattera Foundation, AB Xuma Foundation and Trevor Huddlestone Memorial Centre are powerful examples of communities championing their heritage and are an opportunity for the NHC to extend the frontier of heritage co-ordination, transformation and funding.

The story of the horrors of apartheid, of land dispossession, of segregated preferential labour policies and the duty for democratic South Africa working with the world to undo the multi-generational impact of these horrors has to be told, repeated, and harnessed for a better South Africa and a better world.  These memories can inspire South Africans to vigorously pursue solidarity, human rights, sustainable development and reconciliation.

-2025, the year marking the 70th year of the Freedom charter; 70th year of the forced removals; 30 years of the constitutional court and he year of hosting the G-20, under the theme of Solidarity, Equality and Sustainability, could be an ideal time for policy makers, diplomats and communicators to partner with the cultural heritage sector to recommunicate the South African journey from the horrors of apartheid towards equality and sustainability through solidarity and struggle.  There is need for better appreciation of the sheer magnitude of what democratic South Africa is trying to undo. Rallying South Africans and humanity around the duty to sustain the momentum towards equity, redress and a more sustainable life will demand effort and resources.  Preventing a relapse into the abyss is one of the best tributes that can be paid to those who lost so much under apartheid regime.