QUOTATION # 101.

[ON THE RECENT FIRE AT THE UCT LIBRARY]

Interview with UCT academic SHANNON MORREIRA.

QUESTION:

Why is the African Studies Book Collection so significant?

ANSWER:

…….the burning of any part of a library – an archive – is such a terrible thing because you lose voices from the past which may carry alternative histories.

This has particularly significant implications for countries like South Africa with fraught and contested histories. And whose histories have, for centuries, been told from a particular vantage point.

It’s this that has driven attempts to decolonise the curricula at various higher education institutions.

Decolonising is a hard term to define as it relates to knowledge and curricula. But one core idea that’s emerged is that different kinds of knowledge need to be valued.

The archive gave us access to knowledge that had been historically undervalued.

The African Studies collection consists of an astonishing collection of works related to Africa.

These range from works published from as long ago as the 1500s through to the present day.

It contains work in multiple indigenous and non-indigenous languages, and multiple formats: newspapers, maps, anti-apartheid works, activist pamphlets, graduate theses, film and audio.

The collection consisted of around 65,000 volumes, 26,000 pamphlets, 3,000 African films, and 20,000 further items in the audiovisual archive.

The Jagger Reading Room of the University of Cape Town housed many priceless archives that may have been destroyed.

Some of the works are very rare.

Many of the works are also stored in digital format, but not all.

The director of University of Cape Town Libraries, Ujala Satgoor, has confirmed that some valuable collections have been lost but that the fire detection system in the building triggered the fire shutters and many works were saved.

The Jagger Reading Room is a space familiar to generations of African Studies scholars, from the University of Cape Town and beyond. It was a place of quiet, where you could sit, surrounded by generations’ worth of thinking, writing, films.

I have recently been involved in a project that shows the valuable work the archive can do.

…….Having access to this archive allowed for reflection on what histories and kinds of knowledge were valued in the past, and what was left out.

My colleagues have many other examples of the careful work that can be done with the treasures such a collection holds.

The archive of African thought that’s been assembled has allowed a host of decolonial responses to emerge within African Studies.

Mama Casset – COURTESY MAGNIN-A, PARIS

QUESTION:

What issues has the fire raised about holding archive material?

ANSWER:

………The bigger question is whether the higher education sector should be archiving materials.

In my opinion, of course it should.

The collection of historical and present knowledge is one of the core tasks of the university.

And space like a reading room brings scholars together to think and act with each other and with our textual histories.

Archives also allow us to recognise actors outside the university as makers of legitimate knowledge that needs to be valued and stored.

But there needs to be a much more acute recognition of the knowledge that lies outside universities within communities. The national decolonisation project is pushing for this.

******** The full interview can be read here; https://theconversation.com/significant-archives-are-under-threat-in-cape-towns-fire-why-they-matter-so-much-159299

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