Cape Town - The ashes that remained from invaluable literature and other historical material housed at UCT’s Jagger Library as a result of the devastating fire that ravaged the building will be used to create new literary works to fill the library once it is refurbished.
On the second anniversary of the tragic event, UCT announced its partnership with DStv and Ogilvy South Africa for the launch of Stories from the Ashes on Tuesday.
The book, “Stories from the Ashes – Africa’s Story Through the Last Millennium”, written with ash-infused ink, contains remnants from the fire and will be one of the first books to be placed in the library.
DStv collected five tonnes of ash and remnants from the debris of the African Studies Literature in the Jagger Library.
The book will include visuals and reprinted extracts covering topics such as African history and identity, politics, gender and identity, performing arts, literature, language and linguistics, African youth, migration and the African diaspora, environment and climate from surviving African literature in the Special Collections Library.
Reflections in the form of forewords have been written by distinguished alumni such as Justice Albie Sachs, Dr Mamphela Ramphele, Nkosinathi Biko, Carl Manlan, Musa Ngqungwana, as well as Professors Timm Hoffman, Joan Hambidge and June Bam-Hutchinson.
“On this day, the Jagger Library was devastated, first by fire and then by water, which at the time was both a saving grace and a death knell to the library,” UCT Libraries’ executive director Ujala Satgoor said.
Satgoor said DStv had presented the idea to the university of wanting to create ash-infused ink which will be used to print new books. In addition, they wanted to distribute the special ash-infused ink pens and blank books to some of the greatest historians, students and authors across the country to pen new literature which will be donated to the Jagger Library.
“This book serves as a reminder of our renewed commitment to critique collating our different histories and rewriting new African stories. Our stories don't die, they multiply.”
The Jagger Library housed special collections and was a research facility consisting of an African Studies Library, government publications, manuscripts and archives, and rare books.
The UCT Fire Fund was established by the Development and Alumni Department (DAD) a day after the fire on April 19, 2021. To date, 1 393 known organisations and individuals have given cash donations to the fund. In total, R47.3 million was donated, with 1 311 individuals donating more than R15.4m. Half of the donors were located outside of South Africa.
It took 38 days to remove the items from the Jagger Library, with 100 volunteers (of 2 000 volunteers) on every shift forming a human chain.
Sadly, 45 500 items from the Africa Studies Collection, 43 040 items from the Government Publications Collection, and 3 500 items from the African Films DVD collection and several manuscripts from Primary collections were lost in the fire. On the day, 4 000 students were evacuated and placed in temporary accommodation.
Sachs shared how his love of poetry had brought him to the Jagger Library.
“I'm very thrilled by the project ‘Rising from the Ashes’. A beautiful thing that it does is make us aware of how precious the documents are … not just as documents and pieces of paper and books, but the product is so much learning and thought and writing and debate and augmentation and it makes us love, preserve and hug even the materials of our time.”
A digital version of the book will be made available on the website.