Abstract
contested
site of memory, revealing the complexities of heritage-
making in post-apartheid South Africa.
Built in 1904 over a nonwhite prison, the Hall has served as
a military base, courtroom, and later, a community space,
each phase adding layers to its fractured identity. Drawing on
thinkers like Achille Mbembe, Sarah Nuttall, and David Scott,
the study critiques conventional heritage practices that diffused
memory and history through symbolic reconciliation.
Instead, it proposes engaging with the site’s “uncanny” qualities,
where repressed histories resurface through its architecture
and material traces.
Freud’s notion of the uncanny and Scott’s concept of historical
“tragedy” guide the analysis, challenging celebratory
liberation narratives and encouraging a more unresolved,
complex understanding of the past. Through speculative
drawings and mappings, echoing Bernard Tschumi and Forensic
Architecture, the work narrates the Hall’s transformation
and its grassroots reactivation by groups like Keleketla!
and Exotically Divine.
Rather than treating heritage as a fixed commemoration, the
research presents it as a living, contested process that embraces
conflict and demands care. The Drill Hall becomes a
lens to rethink memory, not as something to resolve, but as
something to hold, confront, and continuously engage with.