How does Cape Town manage its diversity?

As a port city, it has facilitated the flow of travellers from both the East and West for centuries. Its history includes periods of slavery and colonial rule, and more recently, racialised apartheid government policies. Its geography features some of the most breathtaking natural beauty in the world. Since 1994 Cape Town has been in a process of political, social and economic transformation. But as a result of its painful legacies, contemporary Cape Town remains ambiguously a culturally diverse and divided city.Imagining the City: Memories and Cultures in Cape Town (HSRC Press) presents an array of oral and visual histories drawn from people who live, work and creatively express themselves in the city. Researched, written and produced by the staff and students of the Centre for Popular Memory (CPM) at the University of Cape Town, it aims to show that Cape Town is so much more than its physical infrastructure, or the cliches people use to describe it. The book reinforces neither the glossy tourist brochure image of the multicultural city nor the ahistorical descriptions of Cape Town as a violent, racist and un-African city. The chapters showcase the experience of the not-famous, the men and women who interact with the city at different times and places. In the process, it explores the significance of popular imagination in shaping memories, identities and agency.Imagining the City presents oral texts and interpretations in a manner which mirrors stories and images back to the citizens of Cape Town, drawing on a range of academic disciplines including history, literature, art, music, sociology and psychology. Chapters deal, for the most part, with the historical legacy of apartheid, but also extend analysis beyond the critical post-apartheid movement of 1994. There is no single conceptual lense used to interpret the city, nor a historical chronology. Rather, through the words of musicians and Muslim cooks, bomb blast survivors and hip hop heads, migrants and macho rugby players, the city is made and unmade in people’s imagination.The first five chapters are grouped under the theme “Disruptive memories”. Sean Field explores sites of memory, including the hostels and notorious Pass Court and Office, in Langa, the oldest formal African township in Cape Town. Sofie Geschier speaks to staff and associates at the District Six Museum to examine how trauma and memory are imagined in the museum space, and how these are mediated to visitors, especially the younger generation. Renate Meyer focuses on people’s fears of urban violence in the post-apartheid context, specifically during the spate of random bombings in Cape Town between 1998 and 2000. She explores how such fears can unnerve one’s sense of being in the city. This scenario is examined further by Anastasia Maw, who looks directly at the psychological trauma and impact of violence on survivors of these bomb blasts. Iyonawan Masade provides a perspective on Nigerian immigrants in Cape Town, deconstructing the meaning of “home” and the relationship migrants have to both their homeland and their host country.Chapters six to eleven explore resilient popular cultures. Gabeba Baderoon presents oral histories of Muslim cooking, revealing the social and creative importance of cooking as well as its role as an imaginative example of resilience to manipulated notions of coloured identity. Colin Miller interviewed a selection of jazz musicians who chose not to go into exile in the 1960s and 1970s, and debates the concept of “Cape jazz”. Still on a music theme, Ncedisa Nkonyeni traces the rise of hip hop and rap in Cape Town, particularly the growth of more politicised “nation-conscious” rap. Louise Green records the oral histories of forest workers on Table Mountain, a space which represented a safe and apolitical working haven for many. Thabo Manetsi and Renate Meyer show how visual artists from different parts of Cape Town draw on their rural and urban environments to make statements, and also look at the difficulty of making a material and artistic living. Felicity Swanson shifts the focus to sport on the final chapter, using the traditional intervarsity rugby clash between the universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch to investigate white youth identities and the construction of masculinities during the apartheid era.Imagining the City is not only relevant to academic debates but also refers to ongoing contestations over city governance and identity. As it transforms itself, Cape Town needs to imagine and re-imagine its own culturally diverse way. The kaleidoscope of memories and experiences that make up this book, signifying aspirations and belongings, as well as displacement and dispossession, are a part of this process.With its accessible text, fascinating array of subjects, and empathetic presentation, Imagining the City makes an important contribution to public discourse about a vision for, and ownership of, the city of Cape Town.Imagining the City: Memories and Cultures in Cape Town is edited by Sean Field, Renate Meyer and Felicity Swanson and is published by the HSRC Press. Contributors include Sofie Geschier, Anastasia Maw, Iyonawan Masade, Gabeba Baderoon, Colin Miller, Ncedisa Nkonyeni, Louise Green and Thabo Manetsi.Copies of all of HSRC Press published titles are available from leading booksellers nationally, and from the online bookshop at www.hsrcpress.ac.za.For a media review copy of the book, or to make contact with the contributors, contact:Contact DetailsKaren BrunsHSRC Press+27 21 466 8022This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.www.hsrcpress.ac.za