From the Ruins: The Constitution Hill Project

Mark Gevisser

Between the University of the Witwatersrand and the inner-city neighborhood of Hillbrow (the densest square kilometer of urban space in Africa) is a giant building that emerges from rubble and ruins. To watch it rise is to see a city and a democracy heaving itself from the debris, carrying with it the physical markers and the tangible echoes of an iniquitous political system but also of a history stretching back long before apartheid. The building is the new Constitutional Court, and it is being erected on the site of the Old Fort, Johannesburg's notorious prison complex. On this 95,000 square meter site, the municipal and provincial governments are developing a major urban regeneration project and mixed-use heritage precinct: Constitution Hill. Constitution Hill will house the new court, symbol and guardian of South Africa's Constitution, one of the most democratic public declarations in the world; it is also being developed as a "campus for human rights" that will house many statutory bodies and nongovernmental organizations whose job it is to protect and interpret the Constitution. Constitution Hill will bear the mantle of this new order-understood, always, within the context of the past: prominent in the precinct are the three derelict prisons, left mostly to rot since 1983 when they were closed down and the prison was moved to Soweto. Each prison has its own legacies and ghostly presences; each will fulfill separate roles in the new public space being wrought from the heart of the city.

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The text below is the result of a walking conversation that took place in late 2003 between me and Mark Gevisser, content advisor to Constitution Hill's Heritage, Education, and Tourism team. . . .--Sarah Nuttall .

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Sarah Nuttall: Why do you think they chose this site, given the heaviness of its history and its proximity to one of the least safe and, in some senses, one of the most traumatic parts of the city?

Mark Gevisser: They explicitly liked the symbolism of building the home of the Constitution atop or within this place of oppression--to put the Constitution into a historical context, to show that it was a consequence of a long and difficult struggle. And secondly, the current court is both activist and evangelical: they want to be of the people, with the people, and in the people. That's important to them, given the constitutional values of transparency and accountability. So they wanted to be right here, slap bang in the middle of Hillbrow, with all its social problems, rather than in, say, rarefied Sandton. An international competition was held for the design of the court and won by an exceptional, a truly exceptional team of young South African architects. And then we were brought in to try and figure out how to give this place meaning; how to interpret it as a heritage site, a tourist site, a place of education, as a place that people could use.

The complete essay appears in Public Culture 16.3

Mark Gevisser is a journalist, biographer, consultant, and filmmaker who has written extensively for publications both in South Africa and abroad. His books include Portraits of Power: Profiles in a Changing South Africa (1996) and a forthcoming biography of Thabo Mbeki.

(c)2004 by Duke University Press. All excerpts appear in Public Culture, Volume 16, Number 3 (Fall 2004). This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of US copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice is carried and that the copyright holder is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or reduplication of this text in other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the copyright holder.