CRITICAL TOOLS (PART 3): Is transformation moving at a 'slow rate'?

This is the third in a series on ‘critical tools’, that helps to enable critical readings of contemporary architecture in South Africa.

In this lecture I look at the notion of 'transformation', generally understood as a project of racial equity to redress the racial inequalities of apartheid-colonialism. It typically entails rubrics that rely on the quantitative monitoring of ‘race’ as an indicator of redress in the ‘post’-apartheid period. In architecture, this has revealed the alarming – in racial terms – ‘slow rate of transformation’ (as it is often uncritically described), with little to no change in the severely skewed racial makeup of professional architects over the last decade (approximately 85% remain classified as ‘White’, although constituting less than 10% of the population of the country).

A closer reading of these phenomena also reveal that they are far from linear, 'slow', or even a 'rate' at all.

"[T]he very factors within the architectural status quo that have ‘haunted’ transformational change (as SAIA president Sindile Ngonyama put it) likewise will also likely implicate any new initiatives. As SAIA’s Executive Manager for Transformation explained: ‘The word “transformation” in South Africa is generally not easily embraced … and it is normally accompanied with the fear of the unknown’ (Sebe 2015). A refocus on transformation may at the same time therefore also produce its exact opposite, such as counter-efforts to reassure existing stakeholders that the status quo is in fact not in danger of any significant change. (...) A (post)colonial-apartheid mode of transformation is thus always ‘doubled’, advanced and crippled at the same time." (Toffa 2020:42)

Sources:

South African Council for the Architectural Profession (SACAP), 2015, Annual Report 2014/2015, viewed 07 July 2019, from https://www.sacapsa.com/page/AnnualReports.

South African Institute of Architects (SAIA), 2015, Annual Report 2014/2015, Cape Media Corporation, Cape Town.

Toffa, T., 2020, ‘Learning to speak? Of transformation, race and the colonialities of architecture’, in A.O.S. Osman (ed.), Cities, space and power, The Built Environment in Emerging Economies (BEinEE): Cities, Space and Transformation Book series Volume 1, pp. 29–76, AOSIS, Cape Town.