‘A house for dead people’: memory and spatial transformation in Red Location, South Africa

Abstract

One of several new South African post-apartheid memory projects, the Red Location Museum in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth opened in 2006, in a century-old informal settlement with strong histories of resistance. The museum was intended to acknowledge the area’s contribution to the liberation struggle, and contribute to dismantling apartheid urban geographies by producing a tourist and cultural economy. However, the project was highly contested from its inception by residents who felt that the priority for the neighbourhood should be housing and service delivery. Major housing-related protests erupted on the museum’s doorstep between 2003 and 2005, and in late 2013 the new cultural precinct was closed down indefinitely. This paper examines the politics and controversies surrounding the Red Location developments between 1997 and 2013, using this case study to consider the ways in which the protests around the museum are rooted in historical and political histories made visible through residents’ radical claiming of ownership of the museum building. The Red Location example offers a useful consideration of the complexities of applying notions of ‘participation’ and ‘community ownership’ in practice in fraught situations where major change is needed, and makes a case for the thorough historicisation of contemporary conflicts over development and spatial change.

Résumé

Un des nombreux nouveaux projets de mémoire de l’après-apartheid en Afrique du Sud, le musée Red Location de New Brighton à Port Elizabeth a ouvert ses portes en 2006, dans un quartier d’implantation officieuse d’une centaine d’années avec des histoires fortes de résistance. Le musée devait reconnaître la contribution du quartier à la lutte pour la libération et contribuer à démanteler les géographies urbaines de l’apartheid en produisant une économie culturelle et touristique. Toutefois, le projet fut fortement contesté dès le début par les résidents qui pensaient que la priorité pour le voisinage devait être le logement et les services. Des manifestations importantes en rapport avec le logement éclatèrent aux portes du musée entre 2003 et 2005 et vers la fin 2013 le nouveau bâtiment culturel ferma ses portes indéfiniment. Cet article examine les politiques et controverses entourant les développements de Red Location entre 1997 – 2013, utilisant ce cas d’étude pour analyser les manières dont les manifestations autour du musée prennent racine dans les histoires historiques et politiques rendues visibles à travers la revendication radicale des résidents pour la possession du bâtiment du musée. L’exemple de Red Location offre une considération utile des complexités de l’application des notions de « participation » et de « propriété de la communauté » dans des situations tendues où des changements importants sont nécessaires et présente des arguments favorables pour l’historicisation des conflits contemporains contre le développement et le changement spatial.

Resumen

Uno de los nuevos proyectos sudafricanos de memoria post-apartheid, el museo Red Location en New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, abrió sus puertas en 2006, en un antiguo asentamiento informal con fuertes historias de resistencia. El museo pretendía reconocer la contribución del área a la lucha de liberación y contribuir al desmantelamiento de las geografías urbanas del apartheid produciendo una economía turística y cultural. Sin embargo, el proyecto fue muy discutido desde su inicio por los residentes que sentían que la prioridad para el barrio eran la vivienda y la prestación de servicios. Grandes protestas relacionadas con la vivienda estallaron en la puerta del museo entre 2003 y 2005 y, a finales de 2013, el nuevo recinto cultural fue cerrado indefinidamente. Este artículo examina la política y las controversias que rodean los desarrollos del Red Location entre 1997 y 2013, utilizando este estudio de caso para considerar las formas en que las protestas en torno al museo están arraigadas en historias históricas y políticas hechas visibles a través de la radical reivindicación de los residentes de la propiedad del edificio del museo. El caso de Red Location ofrece un ejemplo útil de las complejidades de aplicar las nociones de ‘participación’ y ‘propiedad comunitaria’ en la práctica en situaciones difíciles en las que se necesitan grandes cambios y justifica la historicización completa de conflictos contemporáneos sobre desarrollo y cambio espacial.

Keywords:

• South Africa
• memory
• museums
• heritage
• housing
• post-apartheid

Mots clés:

• Afrique du Sud
• musées
• patrimoine
• logement
• après-apartheid

Palabras clave:

• Sudáfrica
• memoria
• museos
• patrimonio
• vivienda
• post-apartheid

Acknowledgements

Annie Coombes and Suzanne Hall read and provided comments on early iterations, for which I am immensely grateful; thanks also to the anonymous reviewers whose comments have strengthened the paper. This work would not have been possible without the many Port Elizabeth residents who made time for interviews, discussions, and questions.

Notes

1. Lindsay Bremner has drawn on De Certeau’s work (1984) in her reading of Johannesburg, particularly his description of walking as an act akin to speaking: ‘to walk is to appropriate the city in the same way that speaking appropriates language’ (Bremner, 2010, p. 30). Bremner (p. 33) further connects the act of walking to the work of understanding and writing about the city, seeing the ‘walker’ as the active producer of urban space.

2. For discussion on South Africa heritage tourism, see Witz, Rassool, and Minkley (2001).

3. The Apartheid Museum (2001) is the ‘social responsibility’ component of the Gold Reef City casino and theme park. Constitution Hill (2004) is on the site of the notorious Old Fort prison in Johannesburg, housing the Constitutional Court and a museum.

4. The materiality of the Red Location Museum draws on the factory aesthetic of the industrial Deal Party, using materials inspired by the surrounding informal settlement (oxidised corrugated iron, concrete and steel). This use of localised materiality has long been a core aspect of Noero’s practice. Describing the Duduza Resource Centre, for example, Noero writes:

The structural order and the use of materials and their jointing is both familiar and didactic. It is familiar since it borrows its language from the adjacent shack settlements. This is a deliberate strategy … It was felt that by using these systems of order and structure, but in a more sophisticated manner, the labor of these people who had built their own shacks would be honoured … These buildings comprised a very unusual typology which grew out of desperate times. In a sense, one could argue that their purposes were made redundant once liberation had been achieved. (www.noeroarchitects.com)

5. Thembisile Klaas, quoted in Agence France-Presse, ‘PE Residents Force Anti-Apartheid Museum to Close,’ News24, 31 July 2014. http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/PE-residents-force-anti-apartheid-museum-to-close-20140731.

6. Original Xhosa document supplied by members of the NBCR; translation courtesy of Ntobeko Xolo, 2013.

7. ‘Phase 3’ is a reference to the next phase of state-sponsored housing following from the first and second phases built in the 1990s. Jimmy Tutu was, at the time, the ANC ward councillor for Ward 15, which includes Red Location.

8. In September 2014, The Herald ran a front-page story about a man named Themba Adams, who returned to Red Location after six years away intending to move back into his former home – the shack that has now been marked off as part of the museum complex.. Museum security prevented Adams from entering the house (Sobuwa, 2014). This thwarted return, the erasure of Adams’ presence from his former home, poignantly reflects the tensions between the work of memory and the work of urban transformation that define Red Location’s recent history.

9. ‘Phase 1’ was a small block of housing built in the early 1990s, following the failed attempt to relocate Red Location residents in 1986; ‘Phase 2’ was constructed in 1998 under the RDP, in which residents were allocated a basic house consisting of exterior walls and a roof; ‘Phase 3’ refers to the housing built in 2004–2005 alongside the museum.

10. Wilton Mkwayi was a trade unionist and Umkhonto weSizwe leader, charged with treason and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island in 1965.

11. Coombes reports similar findings in her research on the Birds in a Cornfield exhibition, citing a discussion with Pitika Ntuli who explained that he felt it was important that his young sons would have access to such exhibits, as it was possible they would ‘grow up never knowing the realities of informal housing settlements’ (Coombes, 2003, p. 188).