The final lecture considers the flexible and persistent presence of spatial practices that emerged in precolonial Southern Africa within contemporary spaces. It centers on spaces of ritual, agriculture and domestic life in Johannesburg, Soweto and KwaThema, a modernist township dating from the 1950’s as a model for black urban life. The latter two sites have expanses of vacant space, whether built but unused, included in the house lot, or in open common areas and mining wastelands.
In looking at Johannesburg’s now-demolished Western Native Township the lecture, it draws on Julian Beinhart’s 1961 documentation of walls that he proposed were an urban variation of Sotho wall patterns, in turn derived from San rock art. The Soweto case study reflects on the practices of Africanist churches that use the landscape.
KwaThema’s design took into consideration the densities and commonages of Ndebele settlements and so its role as a canvas for indigenous spatial practice is not entirely unexpected. The lecture will look at how residents have reconfigured their properties around courtyards and in relation to the street to embed new and richer interrelations into space. It will also document the ephemeral spaces of parties and rituals that take place in common areas.
These practices will build up an image of the power of Africa’s cultural modernity as an embodied, and conceptually rich and flexible reference despite the extensive dislocations of its subjects in the frame of the colonial city.
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