10.1 Conclusion

10.1 Conclusion The journey must close. The journey here ends that defines this research and the architectural intervention that aims to tell a story and guide a person through a healing journey. To be African is perhaps one of the more obscure forms of identity in African cities, and it is more so in South African cities being one of the more modernised contexts in Africa. The Bantu identity contains the largest population groups in the South African city context yet lacks spaces that value their practices and traditions. These practices and traditions have had centuries’ worth of iterations to serve the people who practice them. In those practices, the often-quoted philosophy of Ubuntu is found. This philosophy contains the beliefs and traditions of community and togetherness used to heal the people who follow it. Individuals must foster good social health on all levels, no matter their background and wealth. These traditions are woven deeply into almost all social interactions. This research has conceptualised how this social health and healing quality of African identity can be given form in the city, bringing to a realised form how the apartheid history and pre-colonial histories should be married. This marriage will address the traumas that have created the dissociation that Bantu Africans experience in South African cities. This research is a reminder of the past without placing it in a museum, a critique of the present segregation, and conceptualises a future where the Bantu Africans can call all parts of Africa home. This research does this through an architectural intervention that encompasses the social healing journey that is as contextual as it is symbolic.