Transcript Project Mayibuye - Missouri Library Association (MLA)

Project Mayibuye
Dr. Thomas R. Kochtanek
School of Information Science and Learning Technologies
University of Missouri
A brief history underpinning the project
• Racial segregation had existed in South Africa since the days of the Dutch East India Company in the 17th
Century and later with British rule in the 18th Century. Capetown was founded as a harbor and a stopping of
point for provisions on the way around Cape Horn on the route to and from East India.
• In 1948, the National Party was elected to power. It strengthened the racial segregation begun under Dutch
and British colonial rule. Apartheid was instituted shortly thereafter.
• The Nationalist Government classified all peoples into three races and developed rights and limitations for
each. The white minority (less than 20%) controlled the vastly larger black majority. The legally
institutionalized segregation became known as apartheid.
• While whites enjoyed the highest standard of living in all of Africa, comparable to First World Western
nations, the black majority remained disadvantaged by almost every standard, including income, education,
housing, and life expectancy. The Freedom Charter, adopted in 1955 by the Congress Alliance, demanded a
non-racial society and an end to discrimination.
Brief history (cont’d):
• In 1990 the National Party government took the first step towards
dismantling discrimination when it lifted the ban on the African
National Congress and other political organizations. It released Nelson
Mandela from prison after twenty-seven years' serving a sentence for
sabotage. Discriminatory laws began to be repealed or abolished
from 1990 onwards after a long and sometimes violent struggle by
the African National Congress and other anti-apartheid activists.
• South Africa held its first universal elections in 1994, which the ANC
won by an overwhelming majority. It has been in power ever since. In
1994 Nelson Mandela was elected President.
University connections
In 1986, the Board of Curators of the University of Missouri authorized the
establishment the University of Missouri South African Education Program
(UMSAEP), an educational initiative to aid South Africans disadvantaged by their
government’s apartheid policies. The UMSAEP committee is led by a director and
includes three members from each of the four UM campuses.
In April 1986, the UMSAEP committee reached out to the University of the Western
Cape (UWC) to explore the possibility of cooperation.
In June 1986, a formal memorandum of academic cooperation was signed by UM
President C. Peter Magrath and UWC Rector Jakes Gerwel. UWC had been
established under apartheid in 1960 as a university for so-called "colored"
students. Under the apartheid regime, any mixed race person was deemed to be
“colored.”
This agreement, therefore, had the distinction of being the first ever signed
between a non-white South African university and a U.S. university.
Enter Rod Uphoff
Rodney J. Uphoff
Elwood Thomas Missouri Endowed
Professor of Law and Director,
University of Missouri South African
Education Program
University of Missouri
School of Law
Project Mayibuye Beginnings
In early 2013 several representatives from the University of Missouri travelled to
the University of Western Cape in Capetown, South Africa and toured the Mayibuye
Archives and their holdings. Members of that delegation included Jim Cogswell,
the Director of University Libraries at Mizzou along with representatives from the
College of Education.
A conversation began regarding the opportunity to digitize and provide access to
the collections held by the archives to a wider audience. In March of 2013 Mike
Pullis and Jim Cogswell contacted Thomas Kochtanek and encouraged him to travel
to Capetown, SA to investigate the opportunity.
In June of 2013 Kochtanek and Anselm Huelsbergen travelled to Capetown with
Rod Uphoff, and was treated to a tour of the holdings, including materials from the
Robben Island Museum, which were spread out over several buildings. The
collections included an array of documents, photographs and materials related to
the anti-apartheid movement from the 1950s on forward.
On December 3, 2013 a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between three parties that
established Project Mayibuye as a collaboration between the three institutions
.
The MOU established three persons as point persons for
the project, now named Project Mayibuye:
• Ms. Pateka P. Ntschuntshe – Matshaya
• Director Library Services at the University of Western Cape
• Mariki Victor
• Manager – Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archive
• at the University of Western Cape
• Dr. Thomas Kochtanek
• School of Information Science and Learning Technologies
• University of Missouri
Entrance to Mayibuye Archive
Summer Program July 2014
In July 2014 a group of MLS students travelled to Capetown to
participate in the International Program put together by Dr. Jenny
Bossaller of SISLT and the College of Education.
One of their projects was to organize a set of materials from the
collection and create a finding tool representing that collection. In
doing this the team looked at a range of materials held within the
archives.
Project Overview
The University of the Western Cape (UWC), the University of Missouri (MU)
and the Robben Island Museum (RIM) are partnering to seek funds to
dramatically enhance access to the Mayibuye Archives, a vast multi-media
collection of photos, posters, videos, letters, and documents that are largely
accessible now only to those who visit UWC’s campus. This rich collection
documents the campaign both in South Africa and around the world to bring
down the apartheid regime.
The Mayibuye Project seeks to make that struggle come alive for generations
to come by creating an interactive digital resource that includes interactive
tools and lesson plans that will make this vital history accessible to millions
around the world.
Project Goals – Expanding Acess
The aim of the project is to make this largely untapped resource more readily available to
the people of South Africa and to the world. By doing so, more people will be inspired by
the amazing story this collection vividly tells: of the struggle from the dark days of
oppression and apartheid to the development of a new constitution and the birth of a new
democracy.
The Mayibuye Archives needs to be properly preserved as well as shared so that people
around the world may learn about the extraordinary leaders and the sacrifices they made
to create this democracy. The specific goals of this project are to:
• Develop an interactive digital environment for people from diverse backgrounds and
cultures including students, teachers, researchers and the general public.
• Increase understanding of the history of apartheid and the struggle for independence
and democracy in South Africa and the lessons learned from it.
• Expand access to the archival material that captures the struggle for national liberation
in South Africa through state-of-the-art technological and teaching tools.
Impact of this Project
Project Mayibuye will make historical papers, photographs, sound and
oral history, film and video, as well as numerous art and artifact
collections more readily available, to help the world understand the
struggle for freedom from apartheid and the birth of a democratic
nation. By making the Mayibuye Archive Collections engaging and
widely available, we will share a history that should never be forgotten.
Research Opportunities
There are a number of opportunities for research based on connecting to the
primary source documents that have been and continue to be converted to
digital formats that will be made accessible to the broader publics. The
Mayibuye Archives include a variety of materials, such as documents,
handbooks, book chapters, books, magazines, and ephemera. Marxist,
Communist, and anti-apartheid conference materials are scattered
throughout the collection, most dating from the 1980’s and ‘90’s.
There are numerous individual items within the collection that will be of
interest to researchers. Some of the items that we found to be very poignant
were announcements of political prisoners’ releases, a handbook on the
treatment of Bantu servants, pass books and papers allowing a person to
visit prisoners or off-limit areas, etc. Some of these are part of a larger
collection, but some seem to have been donated by themselves, so the
researcher will have to browse the catalog to find them.
Research (cont’d):
While there are many interesting individual items in the collection that will be of interest to
researchers, listed below are some of the larger collections:
Content of MCH Drawer A:
• Materials on Ben Bartman
• Correspondence between DeKlerk and Mandela during negotiations (copies)
• Newspaper articles by Ruth First, anti-apartheid activist and scholar who worked in exile from
Mozambique. Ruth was killed by a parcel bomb addressed to her while in exile.
• Newspaper clippings related to the Rivonia trial, including children’s protests. The Rivonia Trial
took place in 1963-64, and ten leaders of the ANC were convicted of political crimes.
• Newspaper articles about house arrests following the Suppression of Communism Act
• Collections dealing with rugby associations (including Coloured and Bantu leagues)
• Collection about ANC camps and schools set up in Tanzania during exile
Research (cont’d):
MCH Drawer B:
• Maps, prison escape routes, and diagrams about how to make keys to escape from prison from
the Pretoria Prison
• Newspaper collection about Steve Biko, anti-apartheid activist and author who founded the Black
Consciousness Movement.
• Collection of Xhosa-language materials, including songs and poems, and a collection about the
National Anthem in Xhosa and its author
• Booklets and informational bulletins about the South African Congress of Trade Unions
• Bulletins and booklets about the New Unity Movement
• Anti-apartheid movement materials from Italy, the Netherlands, Japan, England, and Germany
• Speeches and addresses of Nelson Mandela
• Football collection from Robben Island, including insignias
• History of the Umkhonto we Sizwe (the MK), the armed wing of the ANC, which was co-founded
by Nelson Mandela after the Sharpville massacre.
Education
The plan is to develop an interactive digital environment that is so
compelling that end users will want to connect up and visit often. By
connecting scholars, teachers, students, and the general public, we hope to
build a compelling website that allows end users of all kinds to connect and
interact with both content and other persons looking for information related
to the struggle for national liberation.
SISLT and the College of Education at the University of Missouri is uniquely
positioned to contribute it’s expertise related to the development of lesson
plans and interactive games, along with expertise in web design,
development and assessment. Plans are to connect educators and students
from all over the world to expand their awareness of these past events and
the efforts to establish democracy in South Africa.
Collaboration
The University of the Western Cape (UWC), the University of Missouri
(MU) and the Robben Island Museum (RIM) are collaborating in the
efforts to make this rich set of collections accessible to all who seek to
better understand the struggle for freedom from apartheid and the
people who supported this effort. This collaboration combines talents
related to content, content representation, and design that will build
upon each other to provide widespread access to those documents,
photographs, posters, letters and videos that are representative of that
era.
Preservation and Access
The richness of its collections, the historical value of its documents, the
significance of the stories they contain and the questions they ask, all these
aspects of the holdings of the Mayibuye Archives place a high premium on
access by researchers from all over the world. To satisfy such demands for its
collections, the Mayibuye Archives seeks to expand the availability of its
holdings through digitization and the internet.
The Archives’ professional staff will collaborate with the College of Education
and the Libraries at the University of Missouri to develop a suitable way to
manage the Archives’ growing digitized materials, maintain them in a
standards-based, preservation environment, and offer digital artifacts from
and information about its collections to researchers the world over.
Advisory Board members
• Anselm Huelsbergen, University Archivist
• Jim Cogswell, Director of University Libraries
• Elizabeth Cogswell -- Sr. Director for Advancement
• Rod Uphoff -- Director, University of Missouri
South African Education Program
• Mike Pullis – Associate Dean -- College of Education
• Gwen Robbins – Director of Advancement -- College of Education
• Neeley Current – Allen Institute
• Tom Kochtanek – SISLT – College of Education
Next Steps:
• Establish a common server space to transfer the existing materials
across to a new operating environment
• Begin to identify specific collections that might be included first
• Create a photo database and consider crowd sourcing those photos
• Engage teachers and students to create games and interactive
environments based on the primary source content
• Establish a “business plan” for long term support of the project
• Seek partners in funding the start up efforts