In traversing the stubborn landscape of South Africa's oppressive past, we are confronted with the ambivalent ruins and seemingly innocuous buildings of the forgotten architecture of colonialism and apartheid. What we observe in this neglected infrastructure is the lingering presence of architecture's largely hidden yet pervasive everyday structures. The buildings and spaces are a powerful reminder of the everyday bureaucracy of colonialism and apartheid – and how this history of subjugation and planning continues to shape life in post-apartheid South Africa.

Such conflicting spatial claims raise a number of haunting questions: What are we to do with these buildings, remnants and abandoned sites? How are we to remember what happened in these places? Which, if any, of these edifices should remain and which be dismantled? Could these buildings and vacant sites serve as inspiration, or offer solace, of battles won and adversity overcome? Should they be made conciliatory, exemplary or explanatory as a space for restitution and justice sought? These spaces are fraught with incomplete resolution as much as ambivalent reverence, for restoration is often conflated with reconciliation since the threat they once implied is mute.

In the first decade of the post-apartheid period a relatively small number of books examined memory, museums and monuments as part of a national reckoning and reconciliation that was also applied to heritage. In the following decade, this grew to address built environment tasks in the increasing debates and conflicts around the politics of the public, community and commemoration. Challenges to the presence of colonial and apartheid symbols in democratic South Africa were further highlighted by the #RhodesMustFall campaign and the charged public anger and discourse that followed. There have subsequently been many animated debates about the place of historical names, statues and art in public spaces, with calls for their removal as an integral part of decolonisation. These debates have taken on global salience just as this volume is being prepared for publication. Statues in countries across the world have been attacked in a spate of protests inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement against the persistent structures of racism and oppression, rooted in painful histories of colonial violence. It is in this context that questions raised by this book acquire particular urgency.