https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5202-0001
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Abstract
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.
Notes
1 L. Segal, ‘Introduction’, in L. Segal, ed., Number Four: The Making of Constitution Hill (Johannesburg: Penguin Putnam, 2006), viii.
2 M. De Certeau, The Writing of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
3 L. Bremner, ‘Memory, Nation Building and the Post-apartheid City: The Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg’, in N. Murray, N. Shepherd and M. Hall, eds, Desire Lines: Space, Memory and Identity in the Post-Apartheid City (London, Routledge, 2007), 85.
4 G. Weszkalnys, Berlin, Alexanderplatz: Transforming Place in a Unified Germany (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010).
5 N. and L. Kritzman, eds, Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past. Vol 3: Symbols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
6 Weszkalnys, Berlin, Alexanderplatz, 32.
7 M. Gevisser, ‘From the Ruins: The Constitution Hill Project’, Public Culture, 16, 3 (2004), 506–519.
8 C. Van der Merwe, ‘Environmental Justice: A New Theoretical Construct for Urban Renewal? The Case of Heritage at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg’, Environmental Justice, 2, 1 (2009), 25–33; C. Van der Merwe, ‘The Limits of Urban Heritage Tourism in South Africa: The Case of Constitution Hill, Johannesburg’, Urban Forum, 24 (2013), 573–588; T. Khumalo, Sebatlelo and C. van der Merwe, ‘“Who is a Heritage Tourist?”: A Comparative Study of Constitution Hill and the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa’, African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure, 3, 1 (2014), 1–13; T. King and M.K. Flynn, ‘Heritage and the Post-Apartheid City: Constitution Hill, Johannesburg’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 18, 1 (2012), 65–82; T. King and M.K. Flynn, ‘Heritage as Urban Regeneration in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg: The Case of Constitution Hill’, in J. Kaminski, A.M. Benson and D. Arnold, eds, Contemporary Issues in Cultural Heritage Tourism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013).
9 S. Douglas, ‘Between Constitutional Mo(nu)ments: Memorialising Past, Present and Future at the District Six Museum and Constitution Hill’, Law Critique, 22 (2009), 171–187. See also Segal, Number Four, which gives an overview of the design and construction process.
10 Z. Patel and C. van der Merwe, ‘Understandings of Urban Regeneration, Heritage and Environmental Justice at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg’, Urban Forum, 16, 2-3 (2005), 244–258; Z. Patel and C. van der Merwe, ‘Constitution Hill: Just Space or Space of Justice’, 115–130, in J. Simon, N. Temple and R. Tobe, eds, Architecture and Justice: Judicial Meanings in the Public Realm (London: Routledge, 2013).
11 B. Law-Viljoen, ed., Light on a Hill: Building the Constitutional Court of South Africa (Johannesburg: David Krut, 2006); B. Law-Viljoen, ed., Art and Justice: The Art of the Constitutional Court of South Africa (Johannesburg: David Krut, 2008).
12 M. Murray, City of Extremes: The Spatial Politics of Johannesburg (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2011), xxii.
13 M. Miles, T. Hall and I. Borden, The City Cultures Reader (London: Routledge, 2000), 3.
14 J. Simon, N. Temple and R. Tobe, eds, Architecture and Justice: Judicial Meanings in the Public Realm (London: Routledge, 2013), 2.
15 A. Coombes, History after Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013), 12.
16 P. Connerton, How Societies Remember: Themes in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 3.
17 S. Marschall, ‘Memory and Identity in South Africa: Contradictions and Ambiguities in the Process of Post-apartheid Memorialization’, Visual Anthropology, 25, 3 (2012), 190.
18 S. Graham, ‘Memory, Memorialization, and the Transformation of Johannesburg: Ivan Vladislavic’s The Restless Supermarket and Propaganda by Monuments’, MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 53, 1 (2007), 72.
19 S. Marschall, ‘The Memory of Trauma and Resistence: Public Memorialization and Democracy in Post-apartheid South Africa and Beyond’, Safundi, 11, 4 (2010), 362.
20 Bremner, ‘Memory, Nation Building and the Post-apartheid City’, 94.
21 A. Sachs, cited in B. Law-Viljoen, ‘In the Heart of the Cyclone’, in B. Law-Viljoen, ed., Light on a Hill, 15.
22 M. Gevisser, ‘From the Ruins’, 515. The longer history of the site, particularly that of the Fort and Prison, along with its various entanglements with local and national historical processes, is beyond the scope of this article. Some perspective on this is provided by an oral history project conducted with people who were formerly imprisoned here. See L. Segal, C. van den Berg and C. Madikida, eds, Mapping Memory: Former Prisoners Tell their Stories (Johannesburg: David Krut, 2007).
23 This applies to Constitution Hill's history, as well as that of the country, and the relationship between the two.
24 South African History Archives, hereafter SAHA, AL2395, A03, Rand Daily Mail 17 February 1965.
25 SAHA, AL2395, A03, The Star 10 December 1964.
26 Interview with L. Bethlehem, CEO of the Johannesburg Development Agency 2005–2010, Parkview, Johannesburg, 8 April 2016.
27 SAHA, AL2395, A03, Express, 15 April 1984; 27 January 1985.
28 SAHA, AL2395, A03, Sunday Times Metro, 22 July 1990.
29 SAHA, AL2395, A03, Rosebank Killarney Gazette, 16 July 1991.
30 SAHA, AL2395, A03, Sunday Times Metro, 24. November 1991.
31 SAHA, AL2395, A03, RFB Consulting, 1992: 90.
32 SAHA, AL2395, A03, Minutes of 1st FSC meeting, 16 August 1994.
33 SAHA, AL2395, A03, Minutes of 2nd FSC meeting, 5 September 1994.
34 SAHA, AL2395, B01.2, Speech by Minister for Public Works Jeff Radebe, 15 July 1997.
35 Johannesburg Development Agency, ‘Constitution Hill: The History of Our Future’, Heritage, Education and Tourism Feasibility Study Report (2002), 7, https://www.jda.org.za/wp-content/uploads/het_feasibility_study.pdf, retrieved on 30 April 2019.
36 L. Segal, ‘From Dream to Reality: The Architects come on board, 1998’, in L. Segaled, Number Four, 89.
37 P. Harrison, G. Gotz, A. Todes and C. Wray, ‘Materialities, Subjectivities and spatial transformation in Johannesburg’, in P. Harrison, G. Gotz, A. Todes and C. Wray, eds, Changing Space, Changing City: Johannesburg after Apartheid (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2014), 4.
38 Murray, City of Extremes, 214.
39 Ibid., 87–95; L. Bremner, ‘Reinventing the Johannesburg Inner City’, Cities, 17, 3 (2000), 185–193; C. Chipkin, Johannesburg Transition: Architecture & Society from 1950 (Johannesburg: STE, 2008), 408–412.
40 Chipkin, Johannesburg Transition, 407–408, 416; Y. Dinath, ‘Between Fixity and Flux: Grappling with Transience and Permanence in the Inner City’, in Harrison et al., Changing Space, Changing City, 235; Bremner, ‘Reinventing the Johannesburg Inner City’.
41 P. Harrison, G. Gotz, A. Todes and C.Wray, ‘Materialities, Subjectivities and spatial transformation in Johannesburg’, in Harrison et al., Changing Space, Changing City, 9.
42 Interview with Harrison, urban planning expert and Executive Director: Development Planning and Urban Management for the City of Johannesburg 2006–2010, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 13 April 2016.
43 SAHA, AL2395, A03, Competition for the New Constitutional Court Building of South Africa, Department of Public Works, 25 August 1997.
44 Ibid., 85.
45 M. Ivanovic and K. Ramoshaba, ‘Pan-Africanisation of South African Political Cultural Heritage as Tourist Attraction’, EuroEconomica, 1, 37 (2018), 212–224.
46 Marschall, ‘The Memory of Trauma and Resistence’, 369.
47 Coombes, History after Apartheid, 57–58.
48 Marschall, ‘The Memory of Trauma and Resistence’, 366, 369.
49 L. Bremner, ‘Memory, Nation Building and the Post-apartheid City’, 9.
50 Interview with L. Bethlehem, 8 April 2016.
51 T. Winkler, ‘Retracking Johannesburg: Spaces for Participation and Policy Making’, Journal of Planning Education and Research, 31, 3 (2011), 263; Bremner, ‘Reinventing the Johannesburg Inner City’, 190–191.
52 P. Harrison, G. Gotz, A. Todes and C. Wray, ‘Materialities, Subjectivities and spatial transformation in Johannesburg’, in Harrison et al., Changing Space, Changing City, 11.
53 K. Beavon, Johannesburg: The Making and Shaping of the City (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2004), 275.
54 Winkler, ‘Retracking Johannesburg’, 261.
55 SAHA, AL2395, B01.2.2.7, Email from Justice Chaskalson to other Justices, 22 February 1999.
56 Interview with L. Bethlehem, 8 April 2016.
57 Johannesburg Development Agency, Heritage, Education and Tourism Feasibility Study Report, 23.
58 Interview with L. Bethlehem, 8 April 2016.
59 Interview with A. Sachs, Justice of the Constitutional Court 1994–2009 and participant in architectural competition and design process, Clifton, Cape Town, 12 April 2016.
60 Interview with A. Sachs, 12 April 2016.
61 Interview with L. Bethlehem, 8 April 2016.
62 Interview with P. Thring, CEO of Constitution Hill Development Company 2012-2014, Bedfordview, Johannesburg, 20 April 2016.
63 Interview with L. Bethlehem, 8 April 2016.
64 Interview with P. Thring, 20 April 2016.
65 Ibid.
66 SAHA, AL2395, B01.2.2.6, Legacy Projects, 1998: 3
67 Interview with A. Sachs, 12 April 2016.
68 E. Kgosidintsi, ‘Decolonising the African Landscape’, The Con Mag (16 September 2015), http://www.theconmag.co.za/2015/09/16/decolonising-the-african-landscape/, accessed 25 November 2016.
69 A. Sachs, cited in B. Law-Viljoen, ‘In the Heart of the Cyclone’, in B. Law-Viljoen, Light on a Hill, 31.
70 L. Segal, ‘From Dream to Reality: The Architects come on board, 1998’, in L. Segal, Number Four, 89.
71 It is important to be critical of power dynamics within established models of participation in planning processes that may undermine the agency of poor people. See L. Stickells, ‘The Right To The City: Rethinking Architecture’s Social Significance’, Architectural Theory Review, 16, 3 (2011), 217, 221; A. Simone, ‘Resource of Intersection: Remaking Social Collaboration in Urban Africa’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 37, 2 (2003), 515, 520–522, 526.
72 Gevisser, ‘From the Ruins’, 511.
73 G. Gotz and A Simone, ‘On Belonging and Becoming in African Cities’, in R. Tomlinson, R. Beauregard, L. Bremner and X. Mangcu, eds, Emerging Johannesburg: Perspectives on the Post-apartheid City (London: Routledge, 2003), 134.
74 Dinath, ‘Between Fixity and Flux’.
75 ‘Temporary sojourners’ was a term used by the apartheid state for black South Africans who were denied urban rights in cities that were officially white spaces.
76 A. Simone, ‘People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg’, Public Culture, 16, 3 (2004), 418.
77 SAHA, AL2395, B03.1, Constitution Hill Heritage Environment and Tourism Prospectus report, June 2003, p 23.
78 SAHA, AL2395, B01.2.2.3, Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council Philosophy for the Development of the Constitutional Court on the Old Fort Site, February 1997, 1.
79 SAHA. AL2395, A01, OMM Design Workshop and Urban Solutions Constitution Hill Masterplan, 2001, 1.
80 SAHA, AL2395, B01.2.2.6, Competition Brief and Conditions for the New Constitutional Court building of South Africa, 1997.
81 SAHA. AL2395, B01.2.2.6, Legacy Projects Working Proposal for the Development of Constitution Hill, 1998, 4.
82 Interview with A. Sachs, 12 April 2016. See J. Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961).
83 SAHA, AL2395, B01.2.2.6, Legacy Projects, 3.
84 Interview with P. Thring, 20 April 2016.
85 Ibid.
86 Further complicating the value of the space is the nature of the work done by the Constitutional Court and other institutions on site, that undoubtedly do work that can be considered a public good, despite the fact that the space itself does not always feel that way. Current research intends to unpack this dynamic further.
87 SAHA, AL2395, B01.2.2.6, Legacy Projects, 1998: 3
88 Interview with M. Gevisser, Writer, Journalist, member of Constitution Hill’s Heritage, Environment and Tourism Team, Kalk Bay, Cape Town, 11 April 2016.
89 Murray, City of Extremes, 20.
90 See Dinath, ‘Between Fixity and Flux’.
91 Murray, City of Extremes, 269, 277–280.
92 The complexities of how the space is used and felt by different people is beyond the scope of this article, but is the subject of ongoing ethnographic research by the author.
93 A. Mbembe and S. Nuttall, eds, Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2008).
94 L. Bremner, Writing the City into Being: Essays on Johannesburg 1998–2008 (Johannesburg: Fourthwall Books, 2010).
95 P. Harrison, G. Gotz, A. Todes and C.Wray, ‘Materialities, Subjectivities and spatial transformation in Johannesburg’, in Harrison et al., Changing Space, Changing City, 17.
96 Murray, City of Extremes, 158; J. Beall, O. Crankshaw and S. Parnell, Uniting a Divided City: Governance and Social Exclusion in Johannesburg (London: Routledge, 2002).
97 See N. Fraser, ‘The Contestation For, and Management Of, Public Places in Johannesburg, South Africa’, Journal of Place Management and Development, 1, 2 (2008), 177–198.
98 J. Robinson, ‘Johannesburg’s Futures: Beyond Developmentalism and Global Success’, in R. Tomlinson, R. Beauregard, L. Bremner and X. Mangcu, eds, Emerging Johannesburg: Perspectives on the Post-apartheid City (London: Routledge, 2003), 270; Murray, City of Extremes, xi–xii.
99 Interview with T. Ntuli, Constitution Hill Development Company Facilities Manager 2011–present (acting CEO August 2014–December 2015), Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, 18 April 2016.
100 Interview with M. Gevisser, 11 April 2016.
101 The notion of different publics is an important one in understanding how different users experience the space at Constitution Hill. Current research aims at exploring the idea of different publics and how they emerge.
102 Interview with R. Phasha, Constitution Hill Development Company Heritage Environment and Tourism Manager, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, 7 April 2016.
103 Interview with T. Ntuli, 18 April 2016.
104 Interview with R. Phasha, 7 April 2016.
105 Interview with L. Bethlehem, 8 April 2016.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Temba John Dawson Middelmann
TEMBA MIDDELMANN majored in history and applied economics for his BA at Wits University. His honours degree in history focused on southern African history, including research on Hartebeestpoort Dam. A master’s degree in African Studies at Oxford University in 2015/2016 provided an appreciation of history’s broader sweeps, as well as refining his research interests around public history and memory, with particular focus on Constitution Hill and Johannesburg. This inspired Temba’s interest in the ways people use public space with regards to its history, management, design and perception; ultimately forming the basis of his PhD studies on public space and spatial justice.