Confronting Vestiges of Colonialism and Apartheid
Edited by Hilton Judin, Arianna Lissoni & Ali Khangela Hlongwane
Contesting one’s place remains central to confronting the lingering impact of colonisation and apartheid, emerging as it does out of the intermingling of our environments, histories, languages and experiences.
In this volume, architects, anthropologists, artists, urban planners, activists and historians examine the ways in which people are rethinking, repurposing and reusing colonial and apartheid architecture and infrastructure. They seek to engage with ways in which history, art and architecture practices contest and subvert these protracted conditions in terms of social justice, development, conservation, heritage, land reclamation and urban renewal.
Understanding the history of disputed places
The focus is on colonial environments in different parts of South Africa and Africa to understand the history of disputed places and responses of remembrance, communal consideration, revival and conflict.
In recent years, public awareness of the physical and environmental reminders of this past has been sharpened by sporadic campaigns and ongoing disputes around land, gentrification, repatriation and heritage.
Globally, there has been a wave of public outcry and contestation about the place of racist names and statues in public spaces, litigation over abandoned and toxic sites, with calls for removal and restitution as an integral part of decolonisation.
There has been recognition of the lived experiences, knowledge and activities through which people and communities build their heritage. In this context, questions about the place of colonial and apartheid planning and architecture and their past acquire salience and urgency in the present.
About the editors
Hilton Judin is an architect in the School of Architecture & Planning at Wits University. He has developed several exhibitions, including displays of apartheid state documents and public video testimonies with History Workshop in Johannesburg and District Six Museum in Cape Town. He curated blank Architecture, Apartheid and After for the Netherlands Architecture Institute. He was in practice with Nina Cohen on Nelson Mandela Museum in Mvezo and Qunu. He published Architecture, State Modernism and Cultural Nationalism in the Apartheid Capital (Routledge) and edited the volume Falling Monuments, Reluctant Ruins: Persistence of the Past in the Architecture of Apartheid.
Arianna Lissoni is a historian and researcher in the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand and part of the Global Soldiers in the Cold War: Marking Southern African Liberation Armies project. She is co-editor of the volumes One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Liberation Histories Today (2012), The ANC between Home and Exile: Reflections on the Anti-Apartheid Struggle in Italy and Southern Africa (2015) and New Histories of South Africa’s Apartheid Era Bantustans (2017). She is also co-author of Khongolose: A Short History of the ANC in the North West Province from 1909 (2016).
Ali Khangela Hlongwane is a Research Associate in the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand and a Writing Fellow at Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Studies (JIAS). Hlongwane’s published work includes the public histories of the 1976 uprisings. He is co-author of Public History and Culture in South Africa: Memorialisation and Liberation Heritage Sites in Johannesburg and the Township Space (2019). Hlongwane is also author of Lion of Azania: A Biography of Zephania Lekoame Mothopeng 1913–1990 and We Are Going Home Armed or Unarmed: A Biography of John Nyati Pokela (1921–1985) (2021).
- DISTRIBUTOR | Jacana Media |
- ISBN | 9781431434466 |
- Recommended Retail Price | R420.00 |
- Classification | History, Current Affairs |
