‘And so they moved one by one’: Forced Removals in a Free State Town (1956–1977)

This article focuses on the Northern Free State town of Kroonstad, looking specifically at what had once been a Coloured section of the African location. It goes on to examine the creation of a Coloured group area on the periphery of the town, under the auspices of the Group Areas Act and in combination with forced removals in the late 1950s. There is a rich literature on the subject of forced removals in South Africa; however the majority of histories have engaged with removals in large urban areas. The iconic removals of Sophiatown and District Six have, to a large degree, been used to epitomise the experience of urban relocation for the millions of people affected by the Groups Areas Act. The history of removals of small groups of people and in small towns is mostly absent from this body of literature and is something this article aims to address. Along with the lack of research surrounding small town removals, is the common narrative of ‘community un-making’ that accompanies histories of removals. In contrast, this article looks at the way in which the communities both before and after removals were in many ways similar and remained connected. Added to this is the notion of nostalgia in relation to the narrative of the period pre-removals and, in this case, the continuing nostalgia for the period after removals.