Constitution Hill Research Articles

Sites of unfinished independence in Johannesburg and Kinshasa

This article looks at the material remains of the African independence era in Johannesburg's Constitution Hill (2004) and Kinshasa's Tour de l'échangeur de Limete (1974) according to how they function within their respective cityscapes. Adapting Walter Benjamin's method, I trace the contemporary meanings of built representatives of momentous eras.

Heritage, Narrative and the Role of the Humanities in Populist Times

At a time when populist rhetoric appears to have evacuated justice and ethics from public debates, I am interested in the extent to which our work as humanities scholars can contribute towards rebuilding viable public spheres, networks of solidarity, and – in the case of memorial sites – physical and imaginative spaces of encounter for audiences with diverse needs and interests. Focusing on Constitution Hill, a heritage precinct in the centre of Johannesburg, I examine what the humanities have to offer for the design of structured narrative environments on memorial sites, for the collaborative work between curators and witnesses, for the possibility of eliciting responsible forms of witnessing, and for the mass-mediated translation of heritage into popular culture. As experts in storytelling, do we have disciplinary and pedagogical toolkits that allow us to contribute to the reinvigoration of public spheres invested in fundamental processes of democracy and social justice, so as to counteract the relegation of ethical concerns ‘[to] the private space of the individual, to be enjoyed only at certain times in our day’ (Temelkuran 120)?

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

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.

Commemorating the past in the urban present: Living heritage on Constitution Hill/Johannesburg

ABSTRACTLocated in the centre of Johannesburg, Constitution Hill represents a distinctive memorial site that commemorates the experiences of male and female prisoners with the state-sponsored violence of apartheid. As part of a larger urban development, Constitution Hill juxtaposes the heritage installations in the three former prison buildings with the new Constitutional Court, the Commission for Gender Equality, as well as some commercial and rental space. The hybridity of the site reflects the curators’ emphasis on living heritage, on remembering the past in response to the needs of the present. Such a multifunctional space of commemoration, political activism, and urban rehabilitation has to navigate competing interests: ideally serving as a campus for human rights, while also requiring the temporary closure of the permanent exhibitions when the venue is used to host other events. Based on extensive archival research and repeated visits to the Women’s Jail between 2013 and 2016, I argue that this urban memorial museum is shaped by often conflicting demands which undermine the objectives of the curators and former detainees who had wanted to expand the archive of apartheid experiences and render visible women’s unique responses to institutionalised racism and its insidious infiltration of everyday life.

Rhythm and connection on Rissik Street: Reflecting on public space research in inner-city Johannesburg

This paper explores how entangled layers of use and contingencies of open spaces in downtown Johannesburg, South Africa, relate to their structural, material and symbolic aspects. Reflecting on research at Pieter Roos Park, Constitution Hill and Gandhi Square, this paper emphasises the walking route that connects these three spaces, mostly along Rissik Street. It examines the rhythms of people’s navigation of the city, according to perceptions of fear and safety, opportunity and adversity, and offers an initial understanding of the continuous interaction between structure and agency. It reflects on reading about these spaces, and how this connects with walking and writing about the city, all acts with particular, overlapping rhythms. Interpreting these in relation to each other, and in relation to my own rhythms, provokes questions that unsettle linear and straightforward understandings of time and memory as well as the individual and their connection to the public. Whilst linear rhythms are predominant, subject to the working week, surprising and paradoxical practices frequently punctuate these rhythms. Both rhythms and their disruptions are influenced on a variety of levels, often linked to perceptions, which intersect with lingering histories and memory in layered, complex ways.

An Early Photographic View of Auckland

An ambrotype photographic view of Auckland presents one of the earliest extant photographs of the urban landscape in the city. As a rare example of a landscape presented as a cased image it marks an early scenic view that would be repeated in later technology. Identification and supporting evidence dates the cased photograph to circa 1857. Of the photographers working in Auckland at that time two primary candidates for the creation of this work are discussed, Hartley Webster and John Nicol Crombie with the argument that the former is the most likely. Several other photographic views from 1858 to 1859 are shown as examples of known early landscape photographs of Auckland. One in particular shows a wider view taken from a similar point on Constitution Hill looking across to Mechanics Bay and Parnell.

“The Walls Are So Silent”: Spaces of Confinement and Gendered Meanings of Incarceration in South African Commemorative Art

This paper explores artistic and activist work that has arisen in response to episodes of violence committed by the apartheid state against anti-apartheid activists. More specifically, it considers representations of suffering in South Africa’s public sphere through a comparison of two post-apartheid commemorative spaces: the Johannesburg Central Police Station (formerly John Vorster Square) and a memorial by artist Kagiso Pat Mautloa that is positioned there, and the Johannesburg Women’s Jail at constitution Hill. Mautloa’s memorial is part of the important Sunday Times Heritage Project, and it commemorates the torture and imprisonment of political detainees. The transformation of the Women’s Jail into an activist and artistic space was curated by Churchill Madikida, Lauren Segal and Clive van den Berg. Through an analysis of these two spaces, I consider some of the tensions that arise in representing trauma and suffering in the public sphere and issues that arise from such tensions. How do artistic commemorations of trauma put viewers in the position of bearing witness to and upholding the memory of traumatic pasts? What is the most effective, or respectful, way to memorialise suffering? To what extent can visual culture help promote healing, recovery, and social change?

Liberated waste: heritage and materiality at Robben Island and Constitution Hill, South Africa

ABSTRACTIn post-apartheid South Africa the state instrumentalised the idea of heritage to advance a project of reconciliation and nation building. Heritage was framed as an inherent good, facilitating symbolic restitution through foregrounding black public histories and fostering a national culture based on the common ownership of heritage resources. This article evaluates this framing of heritage through analysis of the reworking of material remains recovered at two sites of apartheid era incarceration and their different paths to heritage ‘status’. First, it discusses the recovery and rebranding of the fence from Robben Island as an artistic and design commodity. Second, it describes the demolition and recycling of building material from the Old Fort Prison in Johannesburg to build the Constitutional Court. Using ruination as a theoretical entry point, the article shows how the heritage significance of these remains was brought out through engaged interpretation that explicitly linked the material to a dominant, reconciliatory post-apartheid heritage narrative. It was then circulated in different economies of cultural, political and economic value, and put to work to generate commercial profit or to promote constitutional justice. Showing these divergent outcomes, the article critiques the utility of a reconciliatory framing of heritage for purposes of inclusive nationalism.

Offline: Sexual and reproductive rights—health and hypocrisy

Mark Heywood stood to ask his question in Johannesburg last week at the launch of the Guttmacher–Lancet Commission on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All. He observed that we were in a country blighted with a “rape culture”—the epicentre of an epidemic of violations against sexual and reproductive rights. The country had no strategy for dealing with these violations. Only recently was a draft policy on teenage pregnancy written. Regression is taking place in access to abortion. And what, he asked, did we think about the present crisis engulfing UNAIDS? Michel Sidibé, its Executive Director, was arriving in South Africa that same day. And yet wasn't he guilty of failing to deal with the same issues we were urging others to address? What message did we have for him? The launch of our Commission was held in Constitution Hill, a former jail where many anti-apartheid campaigners were once incarcerated. We were in the Women's Prison, now converted into a museum and memorial to South Africa's tortured past. The violent imposition of white racial power. Black women registered in blue ink, white women in red. Physical and psychological humiliation. Dehumanisation. Mindless and repetitive tasks, such as washing, scrubbing, and shining floors with cloths and brushes, working on bleeding knees. Doctors and nurses employed in the prison colluded with the racist regime, inflicting additional cruelties. “I wanted nothing to do with their doctors. I thought they would poison me”, said one prisoner. Another: “There was one black woman who slipped in the shower and broke her hip. The doctor wouldn't come out at night to see her. He made her stand in the queue and he swore at her. Her face was swollen with pain.” South Africa today is free. But violence against women and girls has assumed new forms. Karabo Mokoena, 22 years old and murdered in Johannesburg. Her killer doused her body in acid and set it ablaze. He was sentenced to 32 years in prison just days before we arrived. Zolile Khumalo, a 21-year-old student in Durban. Zolile's former partner shot her dead in her dormitory. In South Africa, the frequency of femicide is five-times the global rate. Every 4 h a woman is murdered. One in five women over the age of 18 years has experienced violence by their partner. A newspaper, The Star, called femicide, “a South African curse”. The health and rights of women and girls worldwide are under attack. The purpose of the Guttmacher–Lancet Commission, co-chaired by Ann Starrs and Alex Ezeh, was to write a new manifesto to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights. We want to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the Sustainable Development Goals. We want to insist on a package of essential and cost-effective interventions as part of universal health coverage. And we want to fight against the forces of conservatism that are killing women, especially young women, today. This struggle is political as well as technical. As Justice Edwin Cameron noted, “Speaking about sex is a political act.” And Mark Heywood's question? Michel Sidibé has done much that is good at UNAIDS. He is a compelling activist. He commands respect and admiration among politicians. His ability to communicate the continued urgency of the AIDS epidemic has saved countless lives. And yet his responses to allegations of sexual misconduct at UNAIDS have been disappointing. He has supporters. But the growing schism over his leadership only shows how divided the AIDS community has become through statements and decisions that many view as ambivalent and ambiguous. There are calls for Sidibé to resign or to be fired. Neither outcome should happen. The UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board last week issued its terms of reference for an Independent Expert Panel on sexual harassment, bullying, and abuse at the UNAIDS secretariat. The panel will deliver its report by December. UN Secretary-General António Guterres must then decide Sidibé's fate. In the meantime, the right response should surely be that Sidibé voluntarily suspends himself during the period of this inquiry. Voluntary suspension would enable an acting Executive Director (possibly Gunilla Carlsson, who only joined UNAIDS in February) to defuse a disablingly acrimonious dispute and restore confidence in UNAIDS. Defending sexual and reproductive health and rights leaves no room for hypocrisy.

‘Meniscus’: A Vision for Sensible and Sensuous Geographies

‘Meniscus’ follows the journey of a young boy by the name of Thulani from his home in Kliptown to an overcrowded prison in the centre of Johannesburg where his father is incarcerated. Tracing Thulani’s movements in contemporary Johannesburg, the short film by Marc Thomas and Chloe Speller offers a poignant reflection on the physical and social production of space and arrives at the troubling conclusion that the confinement of the prison cell is uncannily reflected in the restrictions of urban life. Inevitably, a film concerned with the lack of adequate and hospitable space in the urban present has to excavate the temporal layers of the not too distant past. And thus, in one of its pivotal scenes, the film returns to the infamous apartheid prison in the centre of Johannesburg. Now known as Constitution Hill, the former prison doubles as a place of commemoration for past human rights violations and as a celebration of those institutions (the Constitutional Court) that safeguard a still young democracy. ‘The architecture of detention’ (press kit) is thus never far removed from the desire for spatial justice and the advocacy for a different, liberating map of the city.

Gendered Representations of Apartheid: The Women’s Jail Museum at Constitution Hill

This article examines the ways in which women are represented and remembered at The Women’s Jail at Constitution Hill museum, a former women’s jail that was used to incarcerate women during apartheid in Johannesburg, South Africa. Based on fieldwork at the museum, this study examines how the memory of the former prisoners and of the apartheid regime is shaped and narrated at this site. Situating our analysis within the context of the collective memory of apartheid, we examine how the museum uses artifacts and objects to depict both the specific forms of gendered dehumanization that women experienced at the jail, as well as their journeys to incarceration as a result of discriminatory apartheid laws. We also examine the absence of torture memory and references to hierarchical structures and interactions within the jail itself, noting that these were important dynamics of prison life that are not represented in the museum. This research presents a content and visual analysis of how the use of images and artifacts may illuminate and/or silence specific memories of degradation and humiliation in a museum space.Key Words: Collective Memory, Museums, Representation, South Africa, ApartheidMemorialization, Gender and Memorialization

The Perceived Authenticity of Iconic Heritage Sites in Urban Tourism: the Case of Constitutional Hill, Johannesburg, South Africa

Cultural heritage sites play multiple roles in the development of urban tourism. Amongst these roles, the authentic properties of cultural heritage generate a sense of place, are the main source of authentic tourist experience and assume an important role in reaffirming cultural and national identity. This paper provides a contribution to authenticity discourse both theoretically and empirically. The study examines and re-evaluates the main sources of authenticity of tourist experience generated from South African iconic places which serve a dual function, as ‘must-see’ tourist attractions and as places of new post-1994 national African identity building. The focus is the Constitution Hill heritage site in Johannesburg. The research explores how authentic is the individual tourist experience of the site and whether differences exist in the way domestic and international tourists perceive the authenticity of the iconic place as representative of new South African identity. The results show that the majority of tourists perceive the place as authentic and derive an authentic experience from the visit. No statistically significant differences are observed between the experience of domestic versus international tourists’ experience of the site which was measured by four variables of authentic experience, namely, attraction, attention, outcomes and feelings.

The Limits of Urban Heritage Tourism in South Africa: The Case of Constitution Hill, Johannesburg

Heritage tourism is a significant contemporary feature in many developing countries, particularly in Africa, and fast growing in popularity in South Africa. As many heritage sites are located in cities, heritage tourism is a potential growth segment for urban tourism. This paper analyses strategic policy and interest in heritage tourism for the South African tourism economy. The case of Constitution Hill in Johannesburg is examined as a case study to elucidate the limits of urban heritage tourism. It is argued this iconic heritage attraction is seemingly failing to attract many local visitors or tourists despite its important national heritage status. Using structured interviews with stakeholders and questionnaires with visitors and local residents, the research critically explores their understanding of heritage tourism as well as their perceptions of its influence on the physical landscape as a driver for local development.

Heritage and the post-apartheid city: Constitution Hill, Johannesburg

This article examines the development of Constitution Hill on the site of the Old Fort prison in Johannesburg, South Africa. Constitution Hill is the location of the new Constitutional Court and has two main purposes. First, as a heritage site it attempts to address the divisions that characterise contemporary South African society by acting as a physical manifestation of the human rights ethos around which much of post-apartheid South African public discourse revolves. Second, it was conceived as a developmental node to encourage urban regeneration in Johannesburg’s inner city. However, while the Court and related heritage areas have been established, tensions regarding the site’s different purposes have remained and resulted in its incomplete development.

Between Constitutional Mo(nu)ments: Memorialising Past, Present and Future at the District Six Museum and Constitution Hill

This article explores the powers and potentialities of imaginations of political community at the site of the museum in contemporary South Africa. Taking the District Six Museum (Cape Town) and Constitution Hill (Johannesburg) as the empirical backdrop, I explore the ways in which memorialising practices at these sites bolster or deflate the exaltation of the post-1996 constitutional moment. This argument aligns closely with contemporary discussions by South African constitutional theorists about the role of monumentalism and counter-monumentalism. Indeed, I argue that memorialising techniques employed at the District Six Museum offer a practice of memory-making that resists the fixed and limited boundaries proffered by the new South African constitutional discourse exalted at Constitution Hill. However, my critique does not include a call for a reform of the latter. Instead, I argue that the continuation of monumental memory practices at Constitution Hill, in juxtaposition to counter-monumental practices at District Six, serves a key role in revealing the limits of fixed notions of law and subjectivity in imagining past and future political communities. Drawing on Antonio Negri’s concept of constituent power, I argue that the juxtaposition of monumental and counter-monumental memorial practices exposes the illusion of the division between transcendent Power (potestas) and immanent power (potentia). Finally, I turn to Emilios Christodoulidis’ conception of ‘strategies of rupture’ to consider ways in which this contradiction might be made to ‘persist’ through the site of the museum. Indeed, if the goal is to illuminate the illusion of transcendent power, the juxtaposition of memorialising practices between the two sites (a museological form of ‘tapping of contradiction’) may serve as a platform for the truth of constituent power to be realised.

Environmental Justice—A New Theoretical Construct for Urban Renewal? The Case of Heritage at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg

The South African cityscape has recently been redeveloped through various urban renewal initiatives based in precinct planning. Various conceptual planning tools (like sustainable development) have...

The Reconstruction of Memory at Constitution Hill

Abstract The Old Fort Prison was Johannesburg's main place of incarceration of prisoners for eight decades, including during the apartheid era. Virtually every important political leader in South African history, including Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, and Fatima Meer, as well as scores of ordinary South Africans caught in the web of colonial and apartheid repression, were imprisoned there. Today, this prison complex is home to South Africa's Constitutional Court. Constitution Hill has brought former prisoners to “map” their memories of the site. They also host public dialogues on the injustices of the past, as typified by the prisons at Number Four, as well as people's understanding of their constitutional needs and rights, and their experiences of the country's young constitutional democracy.

Setting up the Nelson Mandela centre of memory and commemoration

Stories about Mr. Mandela's life and work are scattered around the world. They are to be found in institutions holding collections of archival material, in archival collections in the custody of individuals, in the organizations that Mr. Mandela belongs to or has been closely associated with, and in the interactions that Mr. Mandela has had with countless numbers of people, for instance, as a family member, friend, colleague, anti-apartheid leader, political prisoner, chief negotiator, international statesperson and first democratically elected President of South Africa. Equally significant are the largely untapped stories of ordinary individuals, both from within and outside of South Africa's borders. On 21 September 2004, the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory and Commemoration Project was launched by the Nelson Mandela Foundation. The Project is planning to invest a significant amount of time and resources into conducting both South African and international audits of Mandela-related materials, with the aim of creating a single web-based portal to the widely scattered “Mandela Archive.” This article aims to outline the process of the audits, highlight the issues involved in the development of the web archive, as well as provide details on the development of the database architecture. Keywords : centre of memory and commemoration, Constitution Hill Heritage Site, Nelson Mandela Foundation, South Africa ESARBICA Journal Vol. 24 2005: 109-115

The Use of Heritage and Environmental Justice in Urban Regeneration: The Case for Constitution Hill, Johannesburg

The South African cityscape has been redeveloped through precinct planning and urban regeneration initiatives. Various conceptual planning tools like sustainable development have re-shaped these cities—this study tested the potential of heritage, and environmental justice as means for driving this urban regeneration. The paper determines the potential links between urban regeneration, sustainable development, environmental justice and heritage—through testing the success of these interventions by assessing shifts in the psychological landscape of the city. Secondly, the paper traces the extent, to which users of these spaces buy into and support objectives of the regeneration interventions. Through interviews with all stakeholders at Constitution Hill, the study determines the extent to which visitors' understandings of urban regeneration, heritage and environmental justice influences the physical landscape. Conceptually, an environmental justice approach informing regeneration is not fully implemented at Constitution Hill, affecting the role of environmental justice in the building of future sustainable cities.

Understandings of urban regeneration, heritage and environmental justice at constitution hill, Johannesburg

Understandings of urban regeneration, heritage and environmental justice at constitution hill, Johannesburg