Of merchants and mercenaries and their way through the city: Thoughts on the African Urbanism Colloquium, Cape Town April 2009

The African Urbanism Colloquium set out to inspire a dialogue between artists and
academics on how to think and theorize the specificity of African cities. At the root of
the litany of, and frustrations with, ongoing urban poverty and local under-performance
lies a set of assumptions about African cityness that asks to be challenged. ‘Unless we
can imagine and develop a more credible account of everyday urbanism, the desire for
urban improvement will remain a frustrated yearning’ (Edgar Pieterse – founder of the
initiative).

In an interdisciplinary dialogue, the initiative aims to open up new lines of thought and
imagination able to offer more complex and persuasive accounts of contemporary
African cityness. Capturing the complexities of everyday urbanism, including its
affective dimensions, requires an engagement with the city through various media, from
text to sound, to pictures and choreographies.