Yusuf Patel

• Ph.D Student School of Geography, Politics and Sociology
• Email: yusuf.patel@newcastle.ac.uk

Yusuf Patel’s researches two case study sites in South Africa, Johannesburg, namely Constitutional Hill and John Vorster Police Station, known today as Central Johannesburg Police Station.

His PhD explores how the architecture as well as the memory politics of these sites interacts with this broader carceral past and contested future of South Africa.

The two sites to be researched are both located in central Johannesburg but at least initially speak to very different versions of post-Apartheid South Africa. The continuation of function of the John Vorster Police Station as Central Johannesburg Police Station highlights the continuities with the Apartheid era. In contrast Constitutional Hill sits in the Human Rights Precinct, alongside the flame of democracy declaring very obviously the espoused values of the ‘new’ South Africa. The memory politics of these sites are, therefore, embedded in struggles within South Africa about what this ‘new’ South Africa is, should be, and will be. 

He has experience of working as architect in South Africa and an interest in forensic architecture.