Drum Magazine social history photographs, South Africa edition 1716

South Africa, 1959. Last Days Of Sophiatown: Big machines and men with picks are beating down the last walls of Sof'town. Take a last look and say goodbye. Sophiatown, the city that was within a city, the Gay Paris of Johannesburg, the notorious Casbah gang den, the shebeeniest of them all. Sophiatown is now breathing for the last time. I was robbed on her streets, beaten up in her dark corners and I will never forget the day when a woman friend of mine was grabbed from me by Sophiatown's tough sons. Her people do not like the fact that she is being murdered and I sympathise with them because she was a free city. There was Aunt Babes, in Edith Street. Bright's place in Tucker and opposite him the Carlton Hotel, run by a Chinaman. She also had her respectable citizens. There was Dr AB Xuma, the African MD, and Mr J R Rathebe, who reminded everybody that he was once in America. Sophiatown will also boast that it built two gentlemen who fell in love with her, Anthony Sampson and Father Trevor Huddleston.