Respectability and Resistance: A History of Sophiatown

Respectability and Resistance is the first major history of the black township of Sophiatown in western Johannesburg. Sophiatown, together with the neighboring townships of Newclare and Western Native Township, formed the center of black South African urban culture and politics in the 1940s and 1950s. Using a wealth of sources including oral history and much previously unknown archival material, Goodhew provides a detailed portrait of Sophiatown life. The widow turning to illegal liquor production to get her children a good education, the gang of miners who made common cause with the white police, the Communist Party's rather puritanical views on pleasure, and a nativity play satirizing state policy - these are just a few of the diverse strands of life that teemed through Sophiatown.

With a social fabric always liable to fragment, the people of Sophiatown found a fragile unity through a culture of working class respectability. This, in turn, crucially fueled resistance to the state. Although respectability was undermined by state repression and popular militancy, it remains of significance. Goodhew's book joins the ranks of classic books on the working class in the tradition of E. P. Thompson. As such, Respectability and Resistance will be of interest to all labor and social historians.