Prologue: the settler colonial city

Abstract

In 2017, the white, Xhosa-speaking leader of the liberal Democratic Alliance party in South Africa, Helen Zille, tweeted during a trip to south-east Asia that the infrastructures of colonialism could be beneficial assets to build better South African cities and regions. Her statement created a furore in South Africa and attracted an angry response from especially black citizens, but also some whites too. She was accused of defending British colonialism and displaying a remarkable lack of sensitivity to the struggles and oppression that black people had experienced under colonialism. She retorted by suggesting that South Africans should be careful not to throw out the progressive economic development outcomes of the settler colonial experience with the bathwater of political correctness. In the political spat that followed, she refused to apologise for her remarks and continued to hammer at the African National Congress (ANC) for failing to deliver on its development mandate.