Reauthoring Macassar: Storytelling as Community Engagement (CE) and a Spatial Practice in a South African Post-Apartheid Community
ISBN: 978-1-80071-227-0, eISBN: 978-1-80071-226-3
Publication date: 9 August 2022
Abstract
In 1948, South Africa's Apartheid legislation imposed modernist spatial planning on its populations and created worlds Black people struggled to connect with. Crime, poverty and unemployment have emerged as legacies of Apartheid that continue to impact the lives of Black people living in the townships. In 1994, the new democratic government identified community engagement (CE) as a critical process that could help restore the values of Black people and the places they live in.
This chapter explores a CE process as storytelling to trace the spatiality of agency. As a researcher-architect living in a township, I examined the voluntary community organisation (VCO), Studiolight's CE process, and an exhibition entitled Who we are Macassar, which was conducted between 2016 and 2018 in the community of Macassar, a township in the Western Cape of South Africa. The VCO worked with local youth to produce story maps and a street photography project that reauthors (retells and rewrites) the stories of life in Macassar to critically engage the spatial legacies of Apartheid. Brazilian theorist Paulo Freire's writings on how neglected population groups can self-organise to create knowledge that can restore social narratives is useful to make sense of the CE process. I highlight the spaces of the CE process and use Freire's concepts of critical action, praxis and co-creation to structure the study. I then reflect on the nomadic and sporadic spatiality that emerges in Macassar to discuss how architects can think about forging places with a sense of community identity and belonging.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
A shorter version of this chapter was first presented at the International Conference on ‘Spaces and Places’ at Bruges, Belgium, organised by Progressive Connexions from 13 to 14 April 2019. Following the presentation, I was able to modify and restructure the draft to its present form. To this end, I would like to acknowledge the organisers of the conference, Dr Rob Fisher and Teresa Cutler-Broyles, MA, for giving me the opportunity to participate in the event. Many thanks to Demelza Hall and Nishevita Jayendran for discussions on the theme, and to Beitske Boonstra and Stefano Rozzoni for the comprehensive reviewing of the paper. I'm also grateful to my colleagues, Prof. Toma Berlanda and Dr Philippa Tumubweinee, for their critical insights and constructive suggestions on making it sharp and focused. I would like to thank the entire staff and administration of my organisation for supporting travel and creating a space to share ideas. Finally to Charlton Abrahams, Elton Abrahams, Giovanni Alexander, Stephanie Alexander, Elcardo Samuels, the youth participants of Studiolight, and the community of Macassar for their commitment to being the change in our community.
Citation
Abrahams, C. (2022), "Reauthoring Macassar: Storytelling as Community Engagement (CE) and a Spatial Practice in a South African Post-Apartheid Community", Boonstra, B., Cutler-Broyles, T. and Rozzoni, S. (Ed.) Moving Spaces and Places (Emerald Interdisciplinary Connexions), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 79-95. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80071-226-320221006
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022 Clint Abrahams. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited