“Three generations of white South African men were bound together at that table. Vermuelen was the first generation. He defined Africa, made it safe for Basson to defile. I was the last generation, the last to grow up in segregated neighborhoods. Between us was the silent photograph of Wouter Basson. Like a distant father, Basson was absent at the dining table.” – Henk Rossouw (Hole in the White ‘Hood). Also Mahmood Mamdani on Bantu Education at UCT, Gael Reagon on sisterhood, Binyavanga Wainaina on dis-covering Kenya, Gaston Zossou on African intellectuals and more…
Cover:
Strange Fruit by Lewis Allen
Building African Futures (Iwalewa Books, 2022)
Building African Futures presents ten essays by young architects, urban planners and activists that offer innovative solutions to big challenges, including housing shortages, informality, legal roadblocks and misunderstandings between architects, policy-makers and local people. Their ideas are grounded yet transformative. They reflect the authors’ direct experiences across a range of African cities, but the issues they speak to resonate across the continent. This collection is a rich resource for urban activists, built environment professionals, local governments and a general audience with an interest in African urbanism.
The manifestoes were presented in September 2022 during a symposium in Accra titled “Reimagining African Futures through Transformative Urbanism and Architecture”, organised by the African State Architecture (ASA) project, SOAS, University of London; the African Futures Institute (AFI) and the Institute for African Studies (IAS), University of Ghana.