Associate Professor Magda Minguzzi of Mandela University’s School of Architecture recently launched her second book, Origins – Khoisan heritage sites and sense of belonging in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, illustrating three years of research in partnership with ten KhoiSan leaders, based in the Eastern Cape.
The book speaks about the meaning of indigenous heritage and the sense of belonging, as experienced today by the KhoiSan endemic peoples of South Africa. Origins was supported by the National Research Foundation of South Africa and published by Mandela University Press.
Chief Zenzile Khoisan introducing the book ORIGINS. Photo Leonette Bower.
Prof Minguzzi is also the Director of the recently established Indigenous Knowledge System of the Built Environment Unit (IKSBEU) in the University’s School of Architecture.
This Unit is composed of academics from all over the University, students, and both local and national Indigenous leaders and community members. “A true exciting space for exchange”, she says. Read more.
Linking IKS with architecture
In the face of global economic, social, and environmental crises, we must re-learn how indigenous communities lived sustainably and in harmony with the land, Prof Minguzzi says.
Prof Magda Minguzzi telling the story behind the book “Origins”. Photo Leonette Bower.
Applying these practices today, through the involvement of local communities, we can strengthen their local economies, promote indigenous building techniques, and encourage environmental stewardship.
This approach also helps protect cultural landscapes, preserve traditional skills, and sustain local identities, ultimately fostering social cohesion.
About Origins
Origins contains a collection of the author’s interviews with the KhoiSan leaders in 2021, representing unique material and the Indigenous Peoples of South Africa’s experiences. These are acts of restoration, for them to tell and re-write their story, Prof Minguzzi says. Several important heritage sites that the research group visited, as well as Indigenous methodologies, are also covered.
“I have written this book for and with the First Indigenous Peoples of South Africa, the KhoiSan community members and their youth and for the Indigenous Peoples, and I believe it is going to make a difference in their lives,” Prof Minguzzi said. Scholars, architects, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, students and the public will find Origins of interest as well, she says.
“My interest in the First Nations and their heritage started when I arrived in South Africa and at Mandela University in 2013. I realised that there was very little knowledge and understanding of their deep culture and their heritage sites,” Prof Minguzzi says.
The KhoiSan Leaders who contributed to ORIGINS and whose interviews are included: from left, Gaob Thomas Augustus; Gaos Jean Burgess; Gaos Margaret Coetzee; Paramount Chief William Human; Gaob Daantjie Japhta; Gaob Brato Malgas; Xam ≠ Gaob Maleiba; Paramount Chief Gert Cornelius Steenkamp; Chief Wallace Williams; and Gaob Michael Williams.
With her background as architect, formed at the University of Architecture IUAV in Venice, it was of crucial importance for her to have a clear understanding of where the first building sites of human beings are located.
“Those are our "origins", where the contemporary built environment and landscape originated and the base on which we can build a solid future. And I started the collaboration with the leaders of the San and Khoikhoi exactly for this reason. I am deeply grateful to them for this opportunity.”
Since last year Prof Minguzzi has also been working with Chiefs and community members, based in the Western and Northern Cape, extending the range nationally.
The Spirit of Water
Prof Minguzzi’s first book was entitled The Spirit of Water. Practices of cultural reappropriation. Indigenous heritage sites along the coast of the Eastern Cape-South Africa.
Published under the Florence University Press-FUP in 2021, this book covered methods and procedures that could help re-establish the link between the Indigenous communities and their ‘forgotten’ heritage sites, due to colonial segregations.
Prof Minguzzi started this research project in 2015, co-authored with the chiefs of the KhoiSan Peoples living in Nelson Mandela Bay, and assisted by University staff, as Architect Lucy Vosloo, and students. The team explored the Eastern Cape heritage, focusing on the remains of precolonial fish traps located along the shoreline.
About Prof Minguzzi
Prof Minguzzi was born in Alfonsine, a small town in the Ravenna Province, Italy. She studied art and architecture at school and then moved to Venice to study Architecture, from undergraduate to her doctorate.
ORIGINS can be purchased on Takealot or African Sun Media