Empty the Land · Episode 6 of 12 · 20 min
Apartheid's 3.5 Million and the Emptying of the Chagos Islands
After the postwar legal wall against forcible transfer went up, removal walked around it in peacetime, with permits, notices and compensation forms. Roughly 3.5 million Black South Africans were removed between 1960 and 1983 under the Group Areas Act and the homeland system. Between 1968 and 1973 Britain removed the entire Chagossian population to make room for a military base on Diego Garcia, a case still unresolved.
Who's who
- Hendrik VerwoerdApartheid's chief theorist and prime minister
- Trevor HuddlestonAnglican priest whose book exposed the destruction of Sophiatown
- Connie MulderCabinet minister who predicted no Black South African citizens
- Laurine PlatzkyResearcher whose Surplus People Project established the 3.5 million figure
- Cherryl WalkerCo-author of The Surplus People
- Harold WilsonBritish prime minister whose government detached Chagos from Mauritius
- Olivier BancoultChagossian leader and lead litigant against the British Crown
- Keir StarmerBritish prime minister who signed the 2025 treaty with Mauritius
Where it happens
- Sophiatown, JohannesburgCleared from 1955 and rebuilt for whites as Triomf
- District Six, Cape TownDeclared white in 1966; about 60,000 removed
- Diego Garcia, Chagos ArchipelagoIsland cleared for a U.S.-British military base
- Peros Banhos, Chagos ArchipelagoAtoll whose last inhabitants were shipped out by 1973
- MauritiusWhere most Chagossians were taken, and treaty counterpart
Timeline
- 1950Group Areas Act assigns every urban area a single legal race
- February 1955Police begin emptying Sophiatown
- 1965Britain detaches the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius
- February 1966District Six declared a white group area
- 1968-1973Entire Chagossian population removed
- May 2025UK-Mauritius treaty signed, not yet in force by mid-2026
Still debated
The apartheid government disputed the 3.5 million total and the word 'forced', though scholarship has sustained the order of magnitude. Chagossian population counts were long avoided, and the treaty's terms on resettlement remain contested.