The town destroyed to make way 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.

Witness History: The stories of our times told by the people who were there.