The Docrats still retained their ancestral home on the 20th Street in Johannesburg when South African photographer David Goldblatt took their photograph, capturing an image of comfortable serenity. Soon after, the Docrats were 'disqualified’ from living there – like many others, governed by apartheid laws. From 1946 to 2016, David photographed this displaced community in the Fietas region, composed of the suburbs of Pageview and Vrededorp, which has now been compiled by his daughter Brenda Goldblatt into the book ‘Fragments of Fietas’.
In the Docrat living room before its destruction under the Group Areas Act, 20th Street, Fietas, Johannesburg. 1977
As early as 1923, plans for separate urban residential areas for Africans had been developed. Local legislation was already propagating segregated living, but once the Nationalist Party came to power with veiled intentions of white supremacy and instilled the Group Areas Act of 1950, racially segregated town planning became compulsory for South Africa. It forced many like the Docrats to move out of their homes to places 'set aside for them'.
Zulu woman salvaging bricks for a white contractor from Indians' houses demolished under the Group Areas Act, Fietas
It's an intimate portrait of people that David presents, highlighting a personal relationship with many of them. A group, possibly a family, stands in front of a house which they were about to abandon – some of the elders smile but the younger children’s faces are etched with distress. An empty breakfast table in Tahera Karbelkar’s house speak to her fear in the final days in which she stayed in her home, not answering the doorbell of the Group Area inspectors when David visited her. Her house was demolished and never rebuilt, the dream of redevelopment having never been achieved by the Mandela government.
Removal from Fietas
Ozzie Docrat with his daughter Nassima in his shop before its destruction under the Group Areas Act, Fietas, Johannesburg
A blackboard outside a shop reads, ‘We have been trading here for the last 40 years, where must we move?’ In a photograph taken in Ossie’s shop in 1976, his daughter smiled as her father looked on. A year later, her sister Asiya Docrat was lugging items helping Ossie Docrat to close shop. 'I had blackboards outside and I used to put the [match] score up there,' Ossie had said. Before closing shutters, the blackboard read: Fietas died today.
Fragments of Fietas, Mack Books, £35
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