EC privileged to house heritage of liberation archives
During this Heritage Month, the National Heritage Council bestowed the Ubuntu Honour Award on Ntsiki Biko.
This high honour is bestowed on those who distinguish themselves as custodians of ubuntu and the values attached to it.
The NHC wholeheartedly supports Ntsiki Biko’s efforts to uphold the legacy of her late husband, Steve Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) who died in prison on September 12 1977 while in custody at the Pretoria Central Prison and was buried on September 25 that year.
The question is: how much do we know about Steve Biko and the BCM, particularly considering stringent efforts to wipe out the movement’s history after it and associated organisations were outlawed in 1977?
The answer lies partly with the fact that archival records of the BCM, PAC and ANC are open for research in the liberation archives at the University of Fort Hare (UFH).
The collection is important in unpacking the history of the struggle in this country.
Most importantly, they are central to enabling a decolonisation of the curriculum – a burning issue in SA today.
The first archival consignment from exile arrived at Fort Hare 26 years ago, on September 21 1992.
Dignitaries present at Fort Hare on that day will recall that a lorry from the port of Durban offloaded a huge container at Freedom Square.
The container was packed to the brim with a consignment from the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College (Somafco) – the ANC school in Tanzania.
The Somafco collection was followed by other ANC material from the movement’s different missions in exile.
The arrival of struggle material was the beginning of a new era for the university, reconnecting it with the history that had been interrupted by the ill-named 1959 Extension of University Education Act and other apartheid legislation.
The repatriation of PAC exile material followed, pioneered by the movement’s stalwart Mfanasekhaya Gqobose.
The BCM handpicked veteran Gerald Phokobye to take the lead in repatriating its collection to Fort Hare.
Of interest in the BCM collection is correspondence between the movement and the ANC in the late 1970s.
In this correspondence, the two movements looked into ways and means to organise a meeting with Oliver Tambo to explore mutual relations.
This includes correspondence between Thabo Mbeki and BCM officials such as Harry Nengwekhulu.
The presence of these records at Fort Hare is no small matter for the Eastern Cape. Other institutions, mostly white, inside and outside SA, were keen to be custodians of these records.
They viewed the archives as a tool to leverage their intellectual and even political influence, particularly since the ANC came to power in 1994.
Though this may not have been stated overtly, there seems no doubt that such institutions looked down upon Fort Hare, viewing the institution as a “bush college”, a term implying the assumed incapability of black universities.
Also, the idea of travelling to the heart of the Ciskei to do research on the liberation struggle was simply unpalatable to some researchers from outside the area. Such doomsayers even questioned the ability of Fort Hare academics to undertake research in the archives.
The result was running battles for these records in the 1990s between Fort Hare and some other better resourced institutions. For Fort Hare, clinging to these records felt like a matter of life and death.
Not only were the archives going to restore the university’s battered image following years of apartheid oppression, but the expectation was that they would also attract scholars, boosting the ailing economy of the town of Alice where the university is situated.
In the end, due to its illustrious history, the liberation movements upheld Fort Hare as the custodian of the struggle records.
But still, this did not mean that the university management under Prof Mbulelo Mzamane could rest on its laurels.
The university had to demonstrate to the liberation movements and to the academic fraternity its worthiness as a custodian and its capability in undertaking groundbreaking research from the archives.
Mzamane looked to the rank and file of potential writers on campus. He turned to Prof Sean Morrow at the Govan Mbeki Research Centre, a move the vice-chancellor did not regret.
Morrow, together with his lieutenants – Brown Maaba and Loyiso Pulumani, undertook research in the liberation archives.
They produced sterling work in the form of academic articles and book chapters and, most outstandingly, their celebrated book Education in Exile: Somafco, the ANC School in Tanzania, 1978 to 1992.
The liberation archives remain an important form of tangible heritage. They are a reminder of the significant role the BCM, PAC and ANC played in SA’s liberation.
They are a reminder that the Eastern Cape is privileged to house these unique records, key for decolonising the history curriculum.
As Eastern Cape citizens, we should not take this privilege for granted. Instead, we should use Heritage Month to encourage the use of the liberation archives for exploring and developing the history of our country, restoring the many unsung heroes and heroines of the struggle to their deserved place in history, and honouring them just as Ntsiki Biko has recently been honoured.
Adv Sonwabile Mancotwya is CEO of the National Heritage Council
Sean Morrow, with Brown Maaba and Loyiso Pulumani, have produced sterling work