Since independence, African countries have been confronted with the relics of colonial powers and, in southern Africa, white minority regimes. The lingering spectre of colonial history and architectures largely hidden, yet pervasive, racist presence haunts these remains. They are a sobering reminder of the everyday bureaucracy of colonialism and apartheid and of how this history of subjugation and planning continues to shape life in postcolonial societies under global capitalism. These societies have not necessarily changed the built landscape that they inherited. Cities and colonial infrastructure were taken over, repurposed and adapted for radically new societies that had to overcome racist divisions, oppression and poverty. Yet, it has often been the case that only the most obvious state buildings and oppressive administrative apparatuses of power were identified for destruction or as historic sites, memorials and museums. This leaves the lingering presence of oppressive everyday infrastructures, which often remain ignored and neglected when not easily disposed of. In this book architects and historians examine the ways people are rethinking, repurposing and reusing colonial and apartheid architecture and infrastructure. Sporadic campaigns and ongoing disputes around land, gentrification, repatriation and heritage, where different and often conflicting agendas are brought to the fore, have sharpened public awareness of the physical and environmental reminders of this past. Through the research of engaged practitioners, the book seeks to create and foster dialogue around the historical infrastructure of colonialism and apartheids daily oppressions.
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Product Details
Weight: 500g
Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
Publication Date: 01 Apr 2024
Publisher: Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd
Publication City/Country: South Africa
Language: English
ISBN13: 9781431434466
About Adrianna LissoniAli HlongwaneHilton Judin
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 Africas 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). Hlongwanes 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 19131990 and We Are Going Home Armed or Unarmed: A Biography of John Nyati Pokela (19211985) (2021).