Burn, the beloved university
“AFTER many months, I had a letter from you dated 14/3. It was a sad note asking why I had not written and whether I still loved you. Oh Ray, I wish I could tell you how our life here has drastically changed but what has not changed is my love for you and Jack...” writes Phyllis Naidoo in one of the pile of letters exchanged with Ray Alexander.
The activist trio, including Professor Jack Simons, shared a deep affection. It was a relationship fired at the coalface of Struggle and continued until their respective deaths.
Mam’ Phyllis donated her papers, including letters, photographs, documents and memorabilia, to the Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Centre (GLDC) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
It is one of the most valuable near-complete collections documenting the Struggle for South African freedom.
Alexander and Simons similarly bequeathed their papers to the University of Cape Town. One hopes that they remain safe there and were not consumed by the fire that gutted the Jagger Library in April 2021. A significant chunk of the records of African history, music and culture was lost in that fire – perhaps forever.
Special collections held by libraries and museums across the world usually hold original and irreplaceable material.
The GLDC, for instance, holds the original recording of Inkosi Albert Luthuli’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1961, in addition to his massive family album and other documents thanks to the generosity of his daughter, Dr Albertina Luthuli.
The museum at the Luthuli home in Groutville, KwaDukuza, has a plaque saying that the copy of their recording comes from UKZN. In addition to that, a considerable number of families and individuals have given their most cherished records and artefacts to the university in the hope that it would be preserved for the generations to come.
The archive started out as an Indian Documentation Centre within the apartheid-thinking of separate development.
Progressive academics at the then University of Durban-Westville, and other individuals, actively resisted the facility and with good reason.
In hindsight, there may be some who might grudgingly admit that had it not been for the work of the centre, a lot of that precious history might not have been recorded at all. After liberation in 1994, the centre took a more unifying posture under its director, Dr Narissa Ramdhani, who positioned it as a space to tell the story of the Struggle for South African freedom and non-racialism with a wider lens.
Workers, peasants, professors and presidents from across the world have walked among its portals and marvelled at the centre’s collection. Thanks to Ramdhani’s and her colleagues’ efforts, iconic events were hosted by the centre, including an exhibition of Madiba’s gifts – some of which remain in the university’s collection.
Why all of this background then? On the 10th anniversary of Mam’ Phyllis’s passing on February 13, an inglorious tribute found its way into the centre – a petrol bomb, apparently. The fire at the Jagger Library made international news.
Here in South Africa, my alma mater didn’t warrant any more than a tiny squeak. In what should have been a national emergency, the university authorities preferred to wallow in the strained silence of ignorance.
UKZN tragically has been reduced to an invisible, careless and carefree leadership. News of the petrol bombing filtered only in whispers and guarded WhatsApp texts. The university’s head of communication was briefly quoted in a newspaper as saying that the Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) office housed in the Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Centre was damaged.
IKS is a national project promoted by the highest office in the land. My previous employer in Pretoria records that: “The Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) funding instrument, managed by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and funded by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), was designed to promote and support research in Indigenous Knowledge to deepen our understanding and its role in the development of community life.”
Needless to say that indigenous knowledge was systematically destroyed and undermined during the slave, indenture, imperial, colonial and apartheid eras. The contradiction, of course, is facilities like the documentation centre in its old format and the ethnically based universities were actively promoted by the apartheid authorities.
Where the understanding of indigenous knowledge gathers valuable information to restore pride, dignity and learning from within historically marginalised African communities, such material must be safeguarded with utmost care.
UKZN owes an explanation about what IKS material was destroyed and what measures are in place to remedy the situation. Silence from the authorities compounds the crime. The pattern of the executive’s (mis)behaviour is familiar and bizarre.
In other crises in recent years, where members of the community have rallied to give the various players, especially students, an ear simply because the university is a national asset belonging to us all, the university’s vice-chancellor has been prone to the intimidatory posture of firing off lawyer’s letters.
For those who have fought bigger ogres, those letters amplify the anger that the university’s malaise is as much the arsonists as the executive leadership.
My own emotion is not heartbreak. It is anger. Unlike Alexander to Mam’ Phyllis, this is not “a sad note”. When I looked at my certificates that bear the university’s crest on the Valentine’s Day after the latest arson attack, my affection for the university again drew on Mam’ Phyllis’s letters: “What has not changed is my love for you.“
The fire was put out before the entire library could be destroyed, but the risk remains. The nation needs to hold the university executive accountable for the safety of the institution, students and staff.
To invoke MP Naicker, founding director of the Department of Information and Publicity in the ANC whose family donated priceless Struggle documents to the university (and with thanks to my younger son, Arushan, who originally researched MP’s rousing call to action): “Don’t mourn. Mobilise!”
Naidoo is the author of Made in Chatsworth, editor of the poetry anthology Twenty-five Years of Freedom and co-author of The Indian Africans with Paul David, Ranjith Choonilall and Selvan Naidoo. The books are available from www.madeindurban.co.za
The first volume of Phyllis Naidoo’s letters were published by Micromega as a tribute to her on her 95th birth anniversary on January 5.