In Aviwe Ndyaluvane’s mind, she sees herself standing in front of the burnt out African Studies Library at UCT at a vigil, candle in hand and tears rolling down her cheeks.
In reality, it’s a no-go zone — a shell of a once-beautiful building that is still cooling off after being gutted by a fire that raged through parts of the UCT campus and surrounding mountains on Sunday afternoon and into Monday.
Ndyaluvane completed her masters at the university, and now tutors students enrolled in the extended degree programme which provides more time and support to complete one’s studies.
Still traumatised by tension over Fees Must Fall and the heartbreak of the rape and death of Uyinene Mrwetyana, she said the African Studies Library had been a place of solace for those wanting to escape racism.
“That place gave us so much knowledge on how to navigate and express how we feel and know our way forward. It was always a space for solace, knowledge and inspiration,” she said.
“Last year, while doing my masters in African spirituality, I would take a train from Khayelitsha to campus and just sit in that space so I could be part of something bigger, something that is about our identity. When I saw it was burning, it just brought back all those memories,” she said.
The reading room was such a special place for me. It was my church.
— Dr Martha Evans
As a tutor to extended degree students, she says, “Most of us are people of colour, and I always push them to take African Studies. So this library is our home. Those of us who have written theses, also imagine them burning inside there — there are so many memories and now so much sadness.”
She added, “When I had writer’s block, I would go and sit there and you get this feeling of all the people before you who did what you’re doing — their thinking, their writing.”
She is not the only one for whom the loss of the Jagger Reading Room is such a wrench.
“The reading room was such a special place for me. It was my church,” Dr Martha Evans, a senior lecturer in media studies at UCT, said. “It was a space that somehow transcended the divisions that have afflicted the institution in recent years.”
Having spent countless hours at the wooden desks with elegant pillars looking on, Evans has a heart and soul that are connected to the experience of being there.
“The room was always quiet. You’d order your item, take your seat at a desk and wait for the librarian to bring you your treasure: a rare book, an old pamphlet or letter, some artefact from long ago. I made so many discoveries in that space,” she said, adding that “it was always frequented by like-minded students and staff, and that’s what made it so special”.
“Nobody would speak, unless in hushed tones,” she recalls, “but we might smile at one another, taking comfort in knowing that we were all there for the same purpose: the pursuit of knowledge. That room was the very heart of UCT. Its loss is immeasurable”.
Ujala Satgoor, executive director of libraries at UCT, said she and others had watched, on site, “in horror and helplessness as this elegant and historical library” burnt.
As images emerged of its once beautiful interior now lying in ashes, Satgoor said she could “only imagine the shock and horror” everyone felt.
The losses are more than just the physical materials that may have been lost, but also the place of the library in the ecology of learning.
— Dr Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk
For Dr Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk, a senior lecturer in film and television studies, the soot and rubble are what remain of the place that sparked his entire academic career.
“I fell in love with film in the building that is now the African Studies Library. Back then, it was the short loan section and I opened the catalogue of VHS tapes at A and began my film education,” he told Sunday Times Daily on Monday.
“The losses are more than just the physical materials that may have been lost, but also the place of the library in the ecology of learning,” he said, adding: “It is so connected to my teaching of African and SA film over the past 20 years, and I always relish the chance to guide students to the special video collections housed there,” he said.
As for Evans, the reading room wasn’t just a place of utility where one finds resources.
It was an experience in and of itself: “Entering the reading room was always a beautiful, reflective and inspiring moment, too,” he said.
The university confirmed that fire shutters were triggered, thereby protecting some of the collections stored in the building, but the full extent of what was lost and what was saved is not yet known.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.