“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…
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Strange Fruit by Lewis Allen
Pumflet 'Black Peace' (Wolff Architects, 2025)
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'black peace' is meditation on home as both a space of belonging and arrest. In the context of Southern Africa, political figures like Winnie Madikezela-Mandela and Robert Sobukwe worked and organised from home under conditions of state violence: house arrest, exile and confinement.
Others like Sol Plaatje and Bessie Head found in their homes a sense freedom. Plaatjie, as a token of deep appreciation for a lifetime of depicting and protesting the Native Land Act of 1913, received his home as a gift from his friends on his 50th birthday. Head, constructed her home from the proceeds of her first novel When Rainclouds Gather, this, after years of enduring enforced exile from South Africa and a continued refugee status in Botswana, the location of her house.
This publication honours theirs and others such as Ellen Kuzwayo's work and their domestic space.