Sophiatown (English pronunciation: /sɵˈfaɪətaʊn/) (also known as Sof'town or Kofifi) is a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. Sophiatown was a legendary black cultural hub that was destroyed under apartheid, rebuilt under the name of Triomf, and in 2006 officially returned to its original name. Sophiatown was one of the oldest black areas in Johannesburg and its destruction represents some of the excesses of South Africa under apartheid. Despite the violence and poverty, it was the epicentre of politics, jazz and blues during the 1940s and 1950s. It produced some of South Africa's most famous writers, musicians, politicians and artists.

Sophiatown was originally part of the Waterfall farm. Over time it included the neighbouring areas of Martindale and Newclare. It was purchased by a speculator, Hermann Tobiansky, in 1897. He acquired 237 acres four miles or so west of the centre of Johannesburg. The private leasehold township was surveyed in 1903 and divided into almost 1700 small stands. The township was named after Tobiansky's wife, Sophia, and some of the streets were named after his children Toby, Gerty, Bertha and Victoria. Before the enactment of the Natives Land Act, 1913, black South Africans had freehold rights, and they bought properties in the suburb. The distance from the city centre was seen as disadvantageous and after the City of Johannesburg built a sewage plant nearby, the area seemed even less attractive. Because of these and other reasons most of the whites had moved out by 1920, leaving behind a vibrant multi-racial community. By the late 1940s Sophiatown had a population of nearly 54 000 Black Africans, 3 000 Coloureds, 1 500 Indians and 686 Chinese.

Thandi Klaasen is a jazz musician from Sophiatown, Gauteng. Her career as a singer and dancer began in the mid-1950s. In 1961 she moved to London to work in the musical King Kong. She has since performed with Dolly Rathebe, Miriam Makeba, Dorothy Masuka, and others.

When she was a teenager, her face was permanently scarred by a mix of thinners and petroleum. She is the mother of singer Lorraine Klaasen.

Miriam Makeba (4 March 1932 – 10 November 2008), nicknamed Mama Africa, was a Grammy Award winning South African singer and civil rights activist.

In the 1960s she was the first artist from Africa to popularize African music in the U.S. and around the world. She is best known for the song "Pata Pata", first recorded in 1957 and released in the U.S. in 1967. She recorded and toured with many popular artists, such as Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, and her former husband Hugh Masekela.

She actively campaigned against the South African system of apartheid. As a result, the South African government revoked her citizenship and right of return. After the end of apartheid she returned home. She died on 10 November 2008 after performing in a concert organized to support writer Roberto Saviano in his stand against the Camorra, a mafia-like organisation local to the Region of Campania.

Zenzile Miriam Makeba was born in Johannesburg in 1932. Her mother was a Swazi sangoma (traditional healer-herbalist). Her father, who died when she was six years old, was a Xhosa. When she was eighteen days old, her mother was arrested for selling umqombothi, an African homemade beer brewed from malt and cornmeal. Her mother was sentenced to a six-month prison term, so Miriam spent her first six months of life in jail. As a child, she sang in the choir of the Kilmerton Training Institute in Pretoria, a primary school that she attended for eight years.

Stef Bos (Veenendaal, July 12, 1961) is a Dutch singer who has been living in Cape Town, South Africa. He sings in Dutch (and occasionally in Afrikaans), and has been successful in Belgium, the Netherlands and South Africa ever since his breakthrough single "Papa" (Daddy) came out in 1990.

He wrote Belgium's entry into the 1989 Eurovision Song Contest, "Door De Wind".

Stef recorded an album (Together as One) in 1993 for which he works together with Johannes Kerkorrel and Tandie Klaasen, two famous South African singers. From that moment on he fell in love with South Africa, the language Afrikaans and its music. We can hear the influence from Africa in his later albums like De onderstroom (The Undercurrent).

Naomie Melanie Harris (born 6 September 1976) is an English actress. She is best known for her starring role as Selena in 28 Days Later, as well as her supporting turn as Tia Dalma/Calypso in the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean films. In November 2011, it was announced that she would appear in the next James Bond movie, Skyfall.

Harris was born and brought up in London, England, the daughter of sitcom writer Lisselle Kayla, a single mother who had emigrated to England from Jamaica as a child. After graduating in 1998 from Pembroke College, Cambridge with a degree in Social and Political Sciences, Harris trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

She had a very difficult time as a student at Cambridge. "When I went to Cambridge University, Mum said I wouldn't fit in and she was right," she explains. "I hated it. The people there were so different to me. They talked about Eton and skiing and here I was, this black girl from Finsbury Park. I just felt so lonely. There was only one other black person in my year; I was very unhappy and cried every day."