Keywords: essay about sophiatown, sophiatown history
Sophiatown is a suburb in Johannesburg, South Africa. It really is located on a Johannesburg ridge called Melville Koppies. Sophiatown can be an exemplory case of how apartheid was harmful to the local inhabitants and that it had to move. Before apartheid Sophiatown was founded for Europeans, but as metropolis Johannesburg developed and a sewage dump nearby, the Europeans remaining and the land was then rented by the indigenous people. The natives were permitted to negotiate in Sophiatown because it was near the sewage dump and the Europeans in the location didn't want the miners to stay within the city boundaries. Sophiatown shows how South Africa developed under apartheid. The apartheid caused multiracial areas in Sophiatown that developed to become multicultural. Sophiatown was the only place the people could hire themselves in Johannesburg that had not been owned by the federal government. Apartheid was the ruling of Europeans in South Africa above the natives during 1948-1994. The Europeans discovered that South Africa experienced abundant resources, especially rare metal, for mining and that they might use the labor of the natives to obtain it. They developed a government system, Nationalist Party, which maintained the natives right down to maintain the European authority which was known as Afrikaners. The population of South Africa migrated to the sites the Europeans were building to mine the resources nonetheless they were required to follow discriminatory laws created by the Europeans. Sophiatown developed as Johannesburg performed and helped to end apartheid.
Sophiatown was at first a farm outside of Johannesburg bought by Hermann Tobiansky. Tobiansky called the suburb after his wife Sophia, and the suburb was limited to Europeans. However, when a sewage dump was built local the Europeans didn't want to settle there and the owner allowed natives and other nationalities to stay there. During the beginning of the first world warfare natives relocated to towns for the careers in mining and manufacturing plant work. During and after the first world conflict the Johannesburg City Council (JCC) transferred slum clearance programs, which removed natives from the interior elements of Johannesburg. These people had nowhere to visit so they shifted to Sophiatown (SA Record).
Because of the multiracial communities, the music culture of Sophiatown continued to develop regardless of the apartheid guideline. Through the 1920's the slums of Johannesburg were packed with hundreds of folks that setup clubs like the Marabi where almost all of the indigenous jazz of South Africa developed. The precise styles in Johannesburg were known as Tsaba-Tsaba that was a working category form of dance music. However, through the 1930's when the JCC was clearing out the slums, people experienced to go to Sophiatown where shebeens and dance-parties were still organised, but the Southern African Jazz was affected by the American Jazz on the air stations in the shanty town. Because of the American influence groupings in Sophiatown would play American golf swing instead of the old Jazz from Johannesburg. The old Jazz returned and was combined with new American swing action to create Kwela that was fundamentally penny whistling. The kwela culture in Sophiatown also developed different boogie forms, one of which was phata-phata or touch touch. The kwela culture was part of the shady part of Sophiatown, people would gamble. Since the people were raided by the police, people would set up look outs so when the authorities were nearby people would put up all evidence and they would play kwela as a justification for a gathering. During the 1950's kwela culture experienced piano and saxophone put into the instrumentation and it became Majuba. The name was eventually modified to Mbaqanga (SA Background).
The culture of Sophiatown was greatly affected by the theatres Odin and Balansky's. The Balansky's theatre played many videos from america. The gangs of Sophiatown patterned their habit following the gangsters in the films they observed. The Tsotsis gang based mostly their dress patterns and vocabulary after "Street with No Name", they dressed up in trench coats like in the movies and they used slang like "Remember men, I'm de brains of dis attire!"(SA background). Other gangs in Sophiatown were known as after famous foreign parties like the Nazis and overseas gangsters like the American Vultures (Sophiatown)
The day to day living of Sophiatown was difficult and was based on any way that they could survive. Because the people were pressured out of metropolis to Sophiatown, folks lived in close quarters and poor living conditions. In Sophiatown the natives weren't required by the federal government to get a permit. The dark-colored land owners needed to pay huge mortgage loan so they allowed others to stay in their backyards. The populace grew exponentially for that reason and people had to become tenants and subtenants on other people's backyards. Since they were usually poor, the individuals who migrated to Sophiatown was required to build houses out of metallic sheets and extra materials. Since all the males were working in the mines, the adolescents were unsupervised and could do whatever they wished to do and joined up with gangs as well as common robbery and murder. The ladies in Sophiatown were required to find are prostitutes or they functioned as liquor queens in shebeens. Shebeens were just like speak-easies in the United States, these were places that individuals could drink alcohol and talk about local problems. Shebeens were usually held in the queens' homes with bands playing for entertainment. Shebeens were high-risk business since authorities could raid and arrest anyone within the Shebeens and the techniques for brewing alcoholic beverages were dangerous at the time. However, Shebeens weren't all bad they were places were politicians satisfied and discussed suggestions to people, and "they weren't all soiled deep rooms but were sometimes clean respectable places with brought in furniture" (Hannerz).
The most important event in Sophiatown was the removal and devastation of Sophiatown. The head of the Southern African authorities was the Nationalist Get together which handled the JCC. As the Nationalist Party was part of the apartheid, it handed down laws to control the natives in Sophiatown and they rationalized this because Johannesburg was growing and the dark-colored neighborhoods were consistently getting too near the white suburbs. Removing the residents of Sophiatown was prepared by the Native Resettlement Board, that was a far more localized area of the NP. The people were changed to Soweto where in fact the NP founded a enclosure system from a census about the populace within the shanty town, nevertheless they didn't find out about the property that was being provided which was generally better than the current living quarters of the average person in Sophiatown. The folks refused to leave and the slogan of the people was "ons dak nie. ons phola hierso" which intended "we aren't moving. . . We are remaining" (SA record). Folks rebelled and used guns and explosives to keep carefully the government officers from forcing them out, however the government eventually won and forced thousands to move to the meadowlands of Soweto. The damage of Sophiatown continued from 1955-1960 during which the individuals were forced to go and their homes were bulldozed.
The removals in Sophiatown brought people's focus on the apartheids unjust rule, because it was the only place the federal government didn't strictly regulate. Following the removals political leaders made speeches specifically naming the event to inspire people to rise resistant to the apartheid rule. One of the people who made such speeches about Sophiatown was Nelson Mandela. Aswell as the revolts in Sophiatown, people in Soweto were revolting because they lost everything they owned when they shifted and the land owners lost all resources of income (SA History).
Sophiatown was a suburb in Johannesburg during the rule of apartheid in South Africa. Sophiatown was the only place in Johannesburg that the federal government didn't own and exert its discriminatory rules over during the apartheid. However, after Johannesburg grew closer to Sophiatown the federal government decided to kill it and relocate the entire populace to Soweto. The results of the damage of Sophiatown were revolts that happened both in Johannesburg and is Soweto where in fact the people were relocated to. The destruction of Sophiatown helped cause the end of apartheid and developed a particular culture of its own.
