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Contributor Tuesday, 20 April 2021, 08:47 Firefighters at UCT preventing a runaway fire from spreading. Photo: Facebook/Friends of Rhodes Memorial (The Citizen) NATIONAL NEWS - It is not yet clear how much history South Africa lost in a series of runaway fires on Cape Town’s Table Mountain National Park at the weekend.  These buildings were of provincial and national importance and housed countless untold stories, educational material, artefacts and priceless trinkets.  UCT library  Emergency services at UCT. Photo: Facebook/Friends o...

The University of Cape Town’s Jagger Library, which housed thousands of theses, artworks, and precious documents, has been gutted. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks) On Sunday 18 April 2021, a massive fire made its way through the Rhodes Memorial, spreading down to the University of Cape Town.  One of the affected areas is the Reading Room of the UCT Libraries’s Jagger Library.  Below is the aftermath in pictures. The burning of the University of Cape Town’s J.W. Jagger Library on 18 April could be one of South Africa’s greatest losses of memory. Many of the most precious...

  Many of the most precious records housed at the building may have been protected at lower levels by the library’s fire doors, but huge collections of literature and records may have been destroyed. Named for the bequest of John William Jagger, an England-born tycoon and politician, who once served as Minister of Railways and Harbour in the cabinet of Prime Minister Jan Smuts, the Jagger library and reading room is home to a number of prominent archival collections. This includes parts of the 65 000-volume-strong African Studies collection and the African Film collection. The library may ...