Search

This essay considers public art practice in post- apartheid Cape Town within the notion of symbolic reparations—a concept deriving out of South Africa's Trust Reconciliation Commission. The paper situates developments in public arts practice in the context of developments in cultural politics in South Africa and globally. More especially, it discusses new genre arts projects, which focus on a range of issues related to identity, space and place. The projects—the District Six Museum, District Six Sculpture Project, PTO, Y30, BLAC, Returning the Gaze, and the In Touch Poetry Bus Tour—focus on issues such as rethinking monuments, the memorialising of ‘hidden histories’, engagements with racism and the abuse of power, and the reimagining of the city. The paper asks how these contemporary and often ephemeral projects, critically engage with issues of history, geography, memory and transformation and, in so doing, mark the landscape of Cape Town, making spaces for dialogue and/or standing as poetic symbols and challenges to the inequalities of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agriculture is a contested issue in the larger South African debate on urban poverty alleviation. This paper investigates the economic viability of urban agriculture and informs the debate on the optimal use of open space in Khayelitsha. It compares the economic performance of the Scaga community garden in the low-income township Khayelitsha, predicted in a 1998 study by Fermont et al., with empirical results of a similar study by Fleming in 2003. It concludes that urban agriculture in Khayelitsha is potentially economically viable, subject to certain conditions being satisfied. However, as a land use, urban agriculture competes with housing, ecological corridors, the stormwater management system and nature areas and reserves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]