Private property and the problem of the miraculous: the kramats and the city of Cape Town

This paper seeks to explore the place of kramats the graves of Muslim saints or Auliyah – in the landscape of contemporary Cape Town. The kramat sites have been proclaimed as heritage sites because of their importance as tangible signs of Islam at the Cape. At the same time, the process of the kramats becoming heritage sites has contained moments of intense, often sensational, public contestation. Offering a reading of the discourses surrounding two contested kramats in Cape Town, this paper explores the way kramats mark out a miraculous space in the prosaic modern city and introduce into the post-apartheid evaluation of heritage, alternative conceptions of space and notions of temporality. They are sites of impossibility where, it is claimed, the laws of nature themselves are interrupted to mark the intangible particularities of the site. This paper explores what happens when this miraculous space is subject to the demands of private property and municipal law and the conflicts that arise from this collision of different conceptual and experiential modalities. It considers the effects of the entanglement of legend and history that result from the production of these sites as heritage in a market-driven economy.     

The aftermath of oppression: in search of resolution through family photographs of the forcibly removed of District Six,Cape Town

Reflecting on a body of family photographs from forcibly removed ex-residents of Roger Street, District Six, Cape Town, I shift frames, from aesthetics to restorative justice, to open a set of questions around trauma, memory and freedom in the aftermath of oppression. Intimate documents of family life, the photographs speak of the destruction of community and of the multiple valencies of place and home. They also speak of historical catastrophe and of the unfinished business of apartheid. Approaching the notion of archive as being open-ended, and not bound in time and space, I suggest a principled and forceful space for engaging a set of debates that lie at the centre of post-apartheid society, even as they are generally disavowed.     

The Scalability of the Shack/Slum Dwellers International Methodology: Context and Constraint in Cape Town

Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) was created by the Indian Alliance and South African partners. SDI has affiliates in 33 countries and is probably the world's largest network of community peer‐to‐peer knowledge exchange in the area of slum/informal settlement upgrading. Common to the Indian Alliance's ‘Federation Model’ and the SDI methodology are a commitment to community organization and community‐led upgrading that is undertaken in partnership with local government. In a context where it is projected that there will be two billion slum dwellers by 2030, the ambition is to enable tens of millions of households to obtain upgraded housing and services. This article questions the scalability and universality of the SDI methodology in Cape Town, where the SDI Secretariat is located.     

Commerce,class and ethnicity: Cape Town at the advent of the mineral revolution (c.1875)

This paper is about economic activity, social structure and ethnicity in the Cape Town of the 1870s. In an attempt to combine quantative methodology with insight gained from written records, I have made extensive use of the Census of1875. Cape Town in that year displayed many similarities with Stedman Jones’ Outcast London. In both cities economic power lay with “those whose income derived from rent, banking and commerce.” Seasonality of production, types of casual occupations and a strong artisanal sector characterised both labour markets. Units of production were small. There was in both cities a notable absence of one of Marx and Engels’ fundamental classes, the industrial proletariat. Instead, amongst a sea of casual labour there was the strong presence of the self‐employed resisters of proletarianisation. I have attempted to show how the white ethnicity of dominant class consciousness both conformed to, and confirmed, class position. This white ethnicity differed from white racism in that it did not condemn people it defined as “Other than White” to perpetual inferiority or cultural difference. The nature of economic activity in the city, together with the reality of both white and coloured? Capetonians in almost all gradations of the under classes, made a rigidly ethnically ordered society or ethnically hierarchical division of labour unlikely.     

The ebb and flow of the fortunes of African studies at the University of Cape Town: an overview

ABSTRACT

This article is an overview of African Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Its main conclusion is that the University has so far failed to put the issue of African Studies high on its agenda. This is by no means a detailed account of the evolution of the concept of African Studies at UCT, but rather an overview that is meant to stimulate debate and discussion as UCT commemorates a centenary of African Studies. The article shows how UCT dealt with the notion of African Studies. In the period leading to the introduction of apartheid in South Africa UCT saw its role as providing resources to those tasked with the formulation and implementation of a “Native policy”. With the advent of apartheid, African Studies focused internally on the study of Africa and its people. This provides the backdrop to the debates of the late 1990s involving Mahmood Mamdani, which centred on the teaching of Africa in an African university. I wrap up this article by sounding a clarion call for UCT to put African Studies high on its agenda if it is serious in fulfilling its mission of making UCT a truly African university.