Imagining the Future through the Past: A Political History of Constitution Hill since 1983

Abstract

Constitution Hill is a precinct in Johannesburg that embodies a particular conception of the transition from apartheid and colonial pasts, represented by prisons-turned-museums, to an imagined future, represented by the Constitutional Court. This paper explores how its recent history of intra-governmental contestation and institutional complexities has contributed to inconsistencies in the vision for the space and an inability to fulfil its development potential. Such tensions show that the process of designing how the power of a key branch of government would be performed, and how a new public space would be used and felt, was wrought with anxiety and uncertainty. The site’s history thus provokes broader questions about how public history is conceived and presented in contemporary South Africa, largely because ideas for Constitution Hill have been so closely tied to debates over collective memories, national histories and imagining the future since long before apartheid ended. While programming and development prospects have improved in recent years, the institutional and financial difficulties continue to shape its realities, as do the unanticipated trajectories of the city and nation. As such, the former prison has been beholden to an ironic path dependency, remaining an enclave in a continuously contested present moment.