The South African Community Destroyed for a Whites-Only Suburb

On 9 February 1955 apartheid South Africa forcibly evicted residents from Sophiatown, a multi-racial suburb in Johannesburg. 65,000 people were ‘removed’ and Sophiatown was demolished and turned into a whites-only neighbourhood called Triomf.

Elizabeth Nobathane was a child at the time and shares her memories of the night soldiers arrived to move her family to a segregated new township called Meadowlands, 13 miles outside of Johannesburg.