Watch this space! A Visual Essay on vacant land in Cape Town

Keeping you post-ed: Space-time regimes, metaphors, and post-apartheid

“…Marketing and tokenism certainly play a role, but there are also indigenous stories and traditional leaders’ place-based ritual healing practices. For instance, a renaming ritual was performed to claim back the Rondebosch Common open space during the Occupy movement; cleansing rituals and Indigenous stories of naming were part and parcel of the struggle to keep Princess Vlei a nature reserve (Ernstson, 2012; Houssay-Holzschuch et al, 2018; Houssay-Holzschuch and Thébault, 2017).…”

“…Others have been recycled, hosting new meanings and social uses in hollowed-out apartheid shells—becoming the hermit crabs of places. Buffer zones (Figure 4) surrounding the townships, for instance, openly became traditional initiation sites, therefore reclaiming a spatial tool from white supremacist control for an African-centered practice of personal and community accomplishment (Houssay-Holzschuch et al, 2018). Buffer zones are also important sites for constructing much needed, if low standard, social housing, as they offer vacant land both within the city and within immediate proximity of an existing community.…”