The past, present and future of African cities: commemorating the life and work of Bill Freund

ABSTRACT

The late American-South African historian Bill Freund wrote many works in an historical approach to urbanization and the environment, places and people, primarily on African cities. This article commemorates his intellectual contributions on African cities as well as urban South Africa more particularly. His work raises themes of interest for global urban and planning history.

KEYWORDS:

• Bill Freund
• African cities
• history
• planning

Acknowledgments

Thanks to James Duminy (University of Bristol), for suggesting this piece in the light of my long term collegial friendship with the late Bill Freund, and to many colleagues who shared their thoughts as well as material not readily accessible in present circumstances - Samuel Rufat (Université de Cergy-Pontoise), Cecilia Pennacini (Università di Torino), Joshua Hagen (University of Wisconsin), Alison Todes (Witwatersrand), Jeremy Grest (University of KwaZulu-Natal), Benoît Lootvoet (formerly IRD), Sophie Oldfield, Anna Selmeczi and Rob Morrell (UCT), Cynthia Kros (Wits and UCT), Jeff McCarthy (in Provence), David Moore (University of Johannesburg), Kira Erwin and Monique Marks (Durban University of Technology), Les Bank (HSRC).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Beauregard, Cities in the Urban Age.

2 Freund, Insiders and Outsiders, xi.

3 Therborn and Mabin, “African Cities in the World,” 177.

4 Myers, African Cities, 21; Simone, City Life, 15.

5 Freund, “Review of Locatelli and Nugent,” 333.

6 Early intellectual influences included crowded lectures on ‘the burning issues of the day’ (Freund, An Historian’s Passage, 76) by Hannah Arendt (cf. Crises of the Republic) and Hans Morgenthau (cf. Truth and Power) at Chicago.

7 Freund, A Historian’s Passage, 177.

8 Morrell, “Bill Freund,” 2.

9 Freund, “Society and Government in Dutch South Africa,” 85.

10 Freund, The African City, ix.

11 Cf. Cooper, Struggle for the City.

12 Freund, The Making of Contemporary Africa.

13 For example, Lonsdale, “A Materialist History of Africa,” 123, 122, gave ‘unqualified praise’ to what was ‘quite a landmark in African historiography’.

14 Freund, An Historian’s Passage, 141.

15 Freund, “Labour Migration,” 73. Intriguingly, his conceptual point of departure came from an article by Manuel Castells (1979) on migration and class struggle in western Europe – just at the time when Castells’s Urban Question exploded into anglophone urban scholarship.

16 Van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History.

17 Mabin, The Map of Gauteng.

18 Freund, “The Social Character of Secondary Industry.”

19 Freund, An Historian’s Passage, 190; Moore, “Introduction: Festschrift,” 2.

20 Freund, An Historian’s Passage, 168.

21 Freund, “Giliomee and Schlemmer,” 222.

22 Freund, Insiders and Outsiders, 91, 64–76.

23 Freund, An Historian’s Passage, 190.

24 Freund, “The City of Durban,” 144, 158.

25 Freund, “City Hall and the Direction of Development”; Freund and Lootvoet, “Où le partenariat public-privé”; Lootvoet and Freund, “Local Economic Development”; Moffett and Freund, “Elite Formation.”

26 Freund and Padayachee, D(urban) Vortex; Freund and Padayachee, “Durban: Structures from the Past,” 5.

27 Freund, “Brown and Green in Durban.”

28 Nilson et al., “Planning for the Future of Urban Biodiversity. ”

29 Freund, “Économie et ville de l’apartheid.”

30 Freund, “Discussant Remarks at ‘Knowing the City’.”

31 Gervais-Lambony, De Lomé à Harare; Goerg, Pouvoir coloniale; Bertrand, De Bamako à Accra.

32 Bouillon et al., “Governance, Urban Dynamics and Economic Development.”

33 Freund, “Contrasts in Urban Segregation,” 527; Freund, “Discussant Remarks at ‘Knowing the City’.”

34 Freund, Maharaj and Makhatini, “Development in Cato Manor.”

35 Freund, “Is There Such a Thing as a Post-apartheid City?,” 296, 283; see also Freund, “La ville sud-africaine.”

36 Freund, “Urban History in South Africa”; Freund, “The State of South Africa’s Cities”, and Freund, “Nelson Mandela Bay and Buffalo City Metros.”

37 Freund, “South Africa as a Developmental State? ”; and Freund, “A Ghost from the Past.”

38 Freund, Twentieth Century South Africa.

39 Ibid., 139–70; Mariotti, “Twentieth Century …  Review,” 909.

40 Mabin and Smit, “Reconstructing South Africa’s Cities?”

41 Freund, “White People Fit for a New South Africa?”

42 Gibbs, “Writing the histories of South Africa’s Cities,” 1233; Pons-Vignon, “by Bill Freund (Review),” 154.

43 Freund, The African City.

44 Freund, “Competition, Neo-Liberalism,” 397.

45 Freund, The Making of Contemporary Africa, 1st edition, 15; 3rd edition, 12.

46 Freund, The African City, 195–6.

47 Ibid., viii.

48 Goerg, “An Ambitious History,” Coquery-Vidrovitch, “Histoire urbaine africaine,” 126–9.

49 Freund, “The African City: Decolonisation.”

50 On Kinshasa see De Boeck and Plissart, Tales of the Invisible City; Freund, “The Congolese Elite”; “Kinshasa: An Urban Elite Considers”; and “City and Nation.”

51 Freund, “Modern and Contemporary Cities”; “African Cities: Material Life”; and “From Precolonial to Postcolonial.” Freund, A Historian’s Passage, 190.

52 Freund, The African City, 189.

53 Rizzo, Taken for a Ride.

54 Freund, ‘Taken for a Ride’ (Review), 180.

55 Freund, “African Cities: Material Life,” 180; “From Precolonial to Postcolonial African Cities,” 17.

56 Freund, The African City, 156–7, 164–5.

57 Freund, “Housing for the People,” 1.

58 Freund, “Housing for the People”; “The Planned Environment”; and “An Introduction to the Life History.”

59 Freund, “Democracy and the Colonial Heritage,” 101–2.

60 Freund, “Discussant Remarks at ‘Knowing the City’”; Oldfield, Selmeckzi and Barnett Knowing the City.

61 Freund, The African City, 164.

62 Freund, “The City of Durban,” 158.

63 Freund, “Planning and Transformation,” 192.

64 Freund, Twentieth Century South Africa, 103–21, 139–70.

65 National Planning Commission, National Development Plan; Freund, Twentieth Century South Africa, 220; Pons-Vignon, “by Bill Freund (Review),” 159.

66 Moore, “Introduction: Festschrift,” 3.

67 Freund, “Review: … Chatsworth,” 117.

68 Freund, “African Cities: Material Life,” 14. Compare Robinson, Ordinary Cities.

69 Freund, “Competition, Neo-Liberalism,” 406.

70 Freund, An Historian’s Passage, 190.

71 Freund, The Making of Contemporary Africa, 3rd edition, 267.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alan Mabin

Alan Mabin is emeritus professor in the School of Architecture and Planning and a member of the History Workshop at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Together with Dan Smit he wrote ‘Reconstructing South Africa's cities? The making of urban planning 1900–2000’, Planning Perspectives 12 (2) 1997, 193–223. He is the author of numerous contributions on city histories and planning in several parts of the world.