TREVOR HUDDLESTON

Sophiatown! How hard it is to capture and to convey the magic of that name! Once it is a matter of putting pen to paper, all the life and colour seem to leave it; and failing to explain its mydterious fascination is somehow a betrayal of one's love for the place. It is particularly important to me to try to paint the picture that I know and that is yet so elusive, for in a few years Sophiatown will cease to exist. . . And in a few years men will have forgotten that this was a living community and a very unusual one. It will have slipped away into history, and that a fragmentary history of a fraction of time. Perhaps it will awaken faint echoes in the memory of some who recall that it was to Sophiatown that Kumalo came to seeking Absalom, his son. But they will never remember what I remember of it; and I cannot put my memories on paper, or, if I do, they will only be like the butterflies pinned, dead and lustreless, on the collector's board. Nevertheless, I must try.

- Trevor Huddleston, Naught For Your Comfort (1956).