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After a hair-raising journey, Barbara and I arrived in Zambia in October 1968 to a warm, friendly, if bureaucratic, welcome — and a job with the ‘Times’ and ‘Sunday Times of Zambia’. We soon started planning to settle in that country for a long haul: apartheid South Africa was making...
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 ...
In 2017 filmmaker Mandla Dube released the biopic Kalushi. Based on freedom fighter Solomon Mahlangu’s life, jazz plays a starring role in the film. In telling Mahlangu’s life story, the film narrows and distorts what jazz meant to freedom fighters. South Africans had specific attitudes to American jazz during the liberation struggle against apartheid. The late trumpeter Johnny Mekoa told me in an interview for my book, “Soweto Blues: jazz politics and popular music in South Africa”: People were listening to this music at home because we felt this was our music and these are our...
Leadership in Question Part Seven: Chief Albert Luthuli’s leadership comprised multiple, mutually respectful identities Search Polity Note: Search is limited to the most recent 250 articles. To access earlier articles, click Advanced Search and set an earlier date range. To search for a term containing the '&' symbol, click Advanced Search and use the 'search headings' and/or 'in first paragraph' options. With... Clear Search Sponsored by Sponsored by Chief Albert Luthuli inhabited multiple worlds, as a Christian, an elected chief whose chiefdom comprised mainly people who did not accept t...