Alexandra was a farm originally
named for the wife of the white
man who owned it. Like
Sophiatown and other black spots
populating white areas before
apartheid, Alex started out as a
squatter settlement where blacks
gathered and lived when coming to
Johannesburg to find work. What
was unique about Alex is that this
farmer sold plots of land to some of
the black tenants in the time before
it was illegal for blacks to own
property. So while Sophiatown and
other black ghettos were razed and
rebuilt as white suburbs, Alex