Abstract

In contrast with the vernacular stores which formed the bulk of the early trading stores in KwaZulu-Natal, a modernist paradigm using parapet walls and high level ribbon windows, characterized store buildings from the 1950’s onwards. These I turn have formed the basis of the architectural tool-kits that comprise African- owned community shops or spazas which today facilitate much of the low-level trade in far-flung areas. That these spazas are constructed in the image of the old and successful trading stores suggests a transfer of architectural idiom that transcends commonly constructed ideas of power and domination, and offers a very different view of a past social landscape and the relations between traders and their customers. More importantly, the modernist trading store, and its offspring, the spaza, have in them embedded a visceral recognition which connotes a variety of different ideas and memories, culminating in the suggestion that these structures comprise anamnestic repositories in the South African landscape.
Keywords: trading store, material culture, modernist structures, anamnestic repository