Group Areas Act 1950

The Group Areas Act, 1950 was a South African statute assigning racial groups to separate residential and business areas in the country's cities, empowering authorities to declare zones exclusively for whites, coloureds, Indians or Africans, under a rule that each racial group could own land, occupy premises and trade only within its own designated area. Enacted in 1950 and implemented from 30 March 1951, it formed the legal foundation of residential apartheid, forcing people of color into smaller and less developed areas while reserving prime locations for whites, and it enabled mass forced removals, most infamously the destruction of the Sophiatown community in 1955, along with lengthy enforced commutes for non-white workers. It was repealed on 30 June 1991 by the Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Act, 1991.