Toby Street Blues

In the darkness of a South African summer morning last week, thousands of Johannesburg policemen--the whites armed with Sten guns and rifles, the blacks with clubs and spears--filed out of their barracks and drove in 300 trucks to a narrow strip of grassland that separates the white suburb of Westdene from the crowded Negro slum of Sophiatown. The cops marched quietly into the sleeping warren. Every 20 yards a policeman took up station. "We mustn't waken these bloody Kaffirs," warned one officer. "We'll shock them well enough after daylight."

Operation Sophiatown was neither a pogrom nor a Mau Mau roundup. It was the South African government's new, efficient way of enforcing its policy of apartheid (racial segregation). An all-African community with shops, churches and the only swimming pool for African kids in Johannesburg, Sophiatown is one of three "black spots" on the western side of the city, which the government has recently zoned as "predominantly European." For whites and Negroes to live in such close proximity strikes South Africa's Boer Nationalists as improper and possibly sinful.

Twelve Hours to Pack. "It is the policy of this government that the native will not own any ground in any European area," announced Native Affairs Minister Verwoerd. He ordered 60,000 people to prepare to leave their homes and move out to new settlements a safe number of antiseptic miles from Johannesburg's whites. The first batch of 150 families got marching orders at 6 p.m. one evening. "Greetings," said the order. "Kindly pack your belongings and be ready to load at 6 a.m." It came three days earlier than expected, and was accompanied by a ban on all public gatherings, political or religious, of twelve or more people. "There is reason to apprehend a feeling of hostility," explained the Minister of Justice. But Father Trevor Huddleston, the gentle Anglican missionary who serves Sophiatown's needy, defiantly held his regular church services.

Six Bottles of Pop. On evacuation day, when the Sophiatowners came out of their condemned homes, they found 2,000 armed policemen on guard at their front doors. The first trucks rumbled down Toby Street. Clustered on the sidewalk, a crowd of young Africans made ready to resist, but when the cops started swinging their rifles, the Negroes melted away.

All day long in Toby Street the army trucks rumbled. Some of the Toby Street folk were not sorry to move, for grim as they are, the iron-roofed brick cottages at Meadowlands are an improvement on much of Sophiatown. But many objected to being moved because they are black. Said Dr. Alfred Xuma, a 60-year-old Sophiatowner who worked his way up from tribal herdsman to a medical degree at the University of Minnesota and the respect of the medical profession: "What happens to people like me? Must "I now be expected to return to my tribal ways?"

By noon it was raining heavily. Mattresses, tables and clothing piled high on army trucks got drenched alongside their owners. But the rain dampened resistance, and by 6 p.m. 700 Sophiatowners--many from Toby Street--were lining up at Meadowlands to be issued a garbage can, a loaf of bread and six bottles of soda pop. Back in Sophiatown, the armed cops retired, and squads of workmen moved in to tear down the empty houses. All night the sledge hammers pounded while other

Sophiatowners watched, knowing that soon it would be their turn, too. And as they watched, they sang a new lament, known as the Toby Street Blues:

Police come to Sophiatown,

Break all the houses down . . .

And off we go to the veld,

Off to the lonely veld.

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