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| 20:55 | I think it is legitimate for us to ask the Truth Commissioners tonight. Is it your role to force suspected bad guys to eat humble pie, to humiliate them in public? Is it not more important to illicit the truth than to try and force people to say how sorry they are? I have a feeling that commissioners should be very careful not to undermine the credibility of the Truth Commission in the eyes of groups like the IFP, the National Party and the Freedom Front who already called the Commission a witch hunt. But those are feelings and opinions. Let’s get back to the programme. In the 1940s and 50s a colourful vibrant culture and way of life developed in a mixed suburb in Western Johannesburg: Sophiatown. Sophiatown was poor but proud, alive and street smart, and it was not obsessed with race. What made Sophiatown special was exactly what irritated the National Party government. The thought that this way of life could spread through the country scared the apostles of apartheid. The ...more | Full Transcript |
| 22:22 | It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. // When one speaks to the people that were there they remember the vivaciousness of Sophiatown’s cultural diversity and the magic of its constant and rebellious heartbeat. // The people used to dance and we used to sit here, my mother was very strict, I couldn’t cross the road. I just had to sit there at the stoep and watch. Sometimes I used to feel scared because the way they danced, they just went on their … jumped on their tummies like this with nothing on their bodies and that . | Full Transcript |
| 23:12 | This melting pot of musicians, writers, artists and gangsters has often been described as our Chicago of the fifties. One loses oneself in the romance of ‘guys and dolls,’ of super cool, of cutting edge. It was a time of no constraints in a time of chains as legislation slowly disinherited non-white people of their rights they band together in Sophiatown and were free. It was the best of times. The importance of Sophiatown was not only in its cultural legacy and the images imprinted on the collective South African mind; it was a sign of things to come. | Full Transcript |
| 23:47 | I was the first black urban experience which expressed itself. // There was a huge in surge of an urban folk who were establishing, I think, a kind of an urban folklore. Your writers of the time, your journalists, your shakers and movers of the place. | Full Transcript |
| 24:17 | Sophiatown happened almost by accident. The owner of the farm Waterval, H Tobianski planned a private lease hold township for low income whites. He named the area after his wife, Sophia, but he failed to attract buyers to the area or white buyers anyway. Sophiatown became an area where black people could buy land and they did, alongside Chinese, Coloureds and Indians. As white people marched to the polls to vote for apartheid a truly non-racial society was born. | Full Transcript |
| 24:54 | Sophiatown was representative of freedom, to live with whoever was your neighbour. // It could not last. In February 1955 trucks rolled into its exuberant centre, loaded its population and removed them to Meadowlands. | Full Transcript |
| 25:20 | The shocking images of Sophiatown, people just being uprooted and carted away much against their will and quite hopelessly struggling against this thing, the machine of the National Party government at the time was just simply too strong. // Shortly after that the area was razed to the ground. In its place came Triomf, ‘triumph’, victory. The sterile clean streets that emerged from the rubble was indeed a triumph for white rule. Sophiatown’s spirit was broken, its people were dispersed. But today in an era which perhaps strives to regain the free, non racial character that was Sophiatown, some people believe that Sophiatown is not necessarily dead. The name at least will be restored. | Full Transcript |
| 26:16 | I think the name is very important. I mean new people have occupied it. But remember that a lot of people who used to stay here are still alive. Although the notion has been approved by the northern metropolitan substructure, the final decision still lies with Premier Tokyo Sexwale. // It would give me great pleasure in history in a very small way to have played the role of reversing the name change and giving back Sophia its own name, Sophiatown. | Full Transcript |
| 26:58 | The decision will not necessarily be a popular one. // Here they want to enforce a name onto the people that’s staying in the area … no, but that’s in the past. // You say they’re enforcing the name onto the people. How can enforce a name … they’re just reinstating the name that was originally here. | Full Transcript |
| 27:17 | What’s Sophiatown? It’s a name of a woman, it’s a lady. For those who have problems, think of Sophia Loren at least, you know, the beautiful Italian woman. But let’s think of Sophia Tobianski, the wife of this white person who used to own the whole of the plot upon which this suburb is established. | Full Transcript |
| 27:46 | Counsellor Eddy Venter also has other concerns. Whose going to deck that cost, the tax payer? Again, another tax burden on us. // I don’t know what is the price of freedom, justice. I think there is no price for that. // Ultimately the real price that is important is the human rights price; that is one price that you cannot afford to ignore. | Full Transcript |
| 28:15 | Bringing back the name Sophiatown might well restore some of the dignity that was stripped away in the past. But it was more than dignity that was lost; it was a way of life. // It was a fluent kind of living, vibrant community and I think longing for the kind of freedom that hopefully we’re getting into now, that’s what made it such a magical place and I think it will always hold a place in the imaginations of people that lived through it and maybe those who didn’t. As we can say it is an original. | Full Transcript |
