as knobkierries, forcefully moved the black families of Sophiatown to Meadowlands, Soweto. Other ethnic groups were also moved: Coloured people moved to Eldorado Park in the south-western part of Johannesburg in addition to Westbury, Noorgesig and other so-called coloured townships; the Indian community moved to Lenasia; and the Chinese people moved to central Johannesburg. Over the next eight years Sophiatown was flattened and removed from the maps of Johannesburg. Triomf After the forced removals and demolition, carried out under the Natives Resettlement Act of 1954, the area was rezoned for whites only and renamed "Triomf" —Afrikaans for Triumph—by the government. The social engineers of apartheid tried to create a suburb for the white working class. In the end it turned out that Triomf became a suburb mainly for poor white Afrikaners. Restoration of the name Sophiatown The Johannesburg City Council took the decision in 1997 to reinstate the old name Sophiatown for the suburb. On 11 February 2006, the process finally came to fruition when Mayor Amos Masondo changed the name of Triomf back to Sophiatown. Geography and geology Sophiatown is located on one of Johannesburg's ridges called Melville Koppies. Melville Koppies lies on the Kaapvaal craton, which dates from three billion years ago. The Koppies lie at the base of lithified sediments in the form of conglomerate, quartzite, shale, and siltstone. It represents the first sea shores and shallow beds of an ancient sea. It also forms part of the lowest level of one of the world's most well known geological features, the Witwatersrand Supergroup. Several fairly narrow layers of gravel, deposited quite late in the sequence, and bearing heavy elements, made the Witwatersrand Supergroup famous. These are the gold-bearing conglomerates of the main reefs. Melville Koppies represents in microcosm most of the features of the Witwatersrand Supergroup. What it does not have is gold-bearing rock. The gold occurs millions of years later, and several kilometres higher up, in the sequence. The Melville Koppies Nature Reserve is a Johannesburg City Heritage Site. In the last 1,000 years, Iron Age immigrants arrived and remains of their kraal walls can be found in the area. Culture Early life in Sophiatown Sophiatown, unlike other townships in South Africa, was a freehold township, which meant that it was one of the rare places in South African urban areas where blacks were allowed to own land. This was land that never belonged to the