The Sophiatown demolition marked the beginning of apartheid’s end

Evidence

This moment of apartheid’s triumph, nevertheless, was the initiating mark also of its undoing. As Triomf was declaring the thousand-year Reich of apartheid, the Congress of the People was committing to apartheid’s undoing, to calling tyranny to its termination. … But the bell for apartheid was tolled that fierce February day of forced removals in 1955, the ghosts of Sophiatown continuing to haunt the apartheid city at its pinnacle of proclaimed triumph. As the edifice of apartheid was being erected, if not resurrected, so it would be resisted, brick by blood-splattered brick. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1550

Categorization

• QUESTION: Is this claim historically supported, or a rhetorical framing? The Sharpeville massacre of 1960 is usually taken as the more standard turning point; worth chasing what events of resistance actually followed from the 1955 removal.
• XREF: connects to: Apartheid demolished a thriving mixed-race neighborhood precisely because it embodied racial mixing — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1547