The third installment of the Reader explores the unholy trinity of land, property and value – the life force of cities everywhere. In this issue António Andrade Tomás reveals the vice and violence that permeate the act of securing land and home in Luanda; Andile Mngxitama challenges rhetoric that positions land theft in South Africa in the realm of material dispossessions and asks us to plumb deeper; Billy Kahora reflects on the state of the ‘estate’ of his Nairobi childhood; and a transformative vision for the Lagos National Theatre is presented in four conversations and seven performative pamphlets.

ISBN number: 978-0-9870295-7-7
Text: English and French
Editors: Ntone Edjabe and Edgar Pieterse
Publishing date: April 2015

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Print editions of African Cities Reader II: Mobilities & Fixtures (May 2011) and African Cities Reader III: Land, Property & Value (April 2015) are available at our online store.

The second installment of the Reader is centered on the theme ‘Mobilities and Fixtures’. In this issue Sean O’Toole interviews architect David Adjaye about African cityscapes, snapshot photography and failed utopias; Victor Lavalle uncovers the making of mercenaries in Uganda; Martin Kimani follows the African visa-seeker in the tragi-comedy that is the post 9/11 airport; Sherif El-Azma explores Cairo by foot; MADEYOULOOK and Santu Mofokeng imagine the didactic possibilities of trains; Manu Herbstein documents the ‘car-doctors’ of Accra; Chris Abani discovers the African city of Las Vegas; and Michael Watts examines oil cities.

ISBN number: 978-0-9814273-4-8
Text: English
Editors: Ntone Edjabe and Edgar Pieterse
Publishing date: May 2011

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Print editions of African Cities Reader II: Mobilities & Fixtures (May 2011) and African Cities Reader III: Land, Property & Value (April 2015) are available at our online store.

In the launch issue Rustum Kozain muses over the cultural and alternative relations built, negotiations and dealings made as a resident of Cape Town (South Africa); Jean-Christophe Lanquetin’s SAPE Project is captured in a pictorial narrative; Gabeba Baderoon and Karen Press poetically expound on the daily traversing of the personal and the (institutional) impersonal; James Yuma investigates the intersection between religion and national narrative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo whilst Valentine Cascarino asks how would a recontextualisation of Kinshasha in Johannesburg (South Africa) fare?; Annie Paul explores the practice of death and burial rituals in postcolonial Jamaica; and Vyjayanthi Rao, Filip de Boeck and Abdou Maliq Simone discuss Kinshasa’s Invisible City and other African cities.

ISBN number: 978-0-9814272-8-7
Text: English
Editors: Ntone Edjabe and Edgar Pieterse
Publishing date: March 2010

Download high-quality pdf document [ 45.7 mb ]

Print editions of African Cities Reader II: Mobilities & Fixtures (May 2011) and African Cities Reader III: Land, Property & Value (April 2015) are available at our online store.