Writing the Histories of South Africa’s Cities after Apartheid

A quarter of a century after South Africa’s democratic elections of 1994, this essay reviews how the work of a generation of radical historians, whose interests in urban history were forged in the crucible of apartheid, has shaped a new generation of urban history writing. At the peak of their influence in the 1980s and early 1990s, many of the older generation of historians were associated with a particularly vigorous branch of social history which researched the making of the South African working class. (Indeed, there have been many retrospectives on ‘E.P. Thompson in African History’.)1 While many themes of social history have fallen into abeyance, in South Africa as elsewhere, I will discuss the ways in which these interests and commitments have inspired a new round of books that have been recently published on South Africa. Looking back, it is startling to note how sharply the context in

Archaeology · Context (archaeology · Crucible (geodemography · Democracy · Political history · Political science · Politics · Quarter (Canadian coin · Social history (medicine · Sociology · Work (physics · African history and culture studies · Demography · Engineering · Gender Studies · History · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · South African History and Culture

• The past, present and future of African cities

  Alan Mabin•Planning Perspectives•2022

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