IFLA WLIC Day 8 - Last Official Day

Last night might have been the Closing Session, but today was my last day with official conference stuff on my to-do list.  I had registered for one of the local library visits, heading to the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and its associated Mayibuye Archives.

UWC has a interesting history, especially for a pretty new institution. It was only founded in 1959, with the first students in 1960. It was created to be a college/training institution for colored South Africans, but in about 10 years become a full university. When the first black Rector was appointed in the mid-1970s, UWC became increasingly liberal and by the early 1980s, had an official policy of nonracial admissions in place.  The university was one of the vocal supporters of democracy, and was home to lots of intellectual debates on the subject.  It has grown into a respected research university (the Chem and Life Sciences buildings were both enormous and state of the art!).  President Mandela praised it for having grown "from an apartheid ethnic institution to a proud national asset."  It's student body is still predominantly black or colored, and the school keeps education for under-serviced/disadvantaged populations as one of it's primary missions.

The library at UWC itself is pretty standard in a lot of ways for a large university library, I guess.  There are 14 floors of materials, special collections, study areas, archives, computer labs, computer classrooms, offices, and so on.  Some of the special collections are pretty unique, with lots of local history (there's a whole section on District 6 and relocations, for example).  On that topic, for another personal touch, one of the collections development librarians leading us around had been a resident of District 6 - his family had been relocated when he was about 5 or 6.  Again, putting a personal face on history.

The library's in a nice, big new building (see above!) and it's understandable they're proud of it.  The 14 floors seem to be staggered or offset from each other, not 14 floors straight up like a sky scraper.  They are all accessed from a main atrium.  There's a ramp instead of a staircase, spiraling up the atrium and opening onto each floor.  It's a neat use of space, and apparently the design won some architectural awards.

 

Something I didn't know was that South African universities use Dewey for their academic libraries.  Not everyone uses Library of Congress, of course, as it's the US Congress referred to in the title.  But I honestly didn't know what they would use, if they would have their own national system or something.  Now I know!

The other stop of the tour was the Mayibuye Archives.  The archives are housed on the UWC campus, on one of the lower levels of the library building, but they are actually run by the Robben Island Museum.  It has focused on collecting material about all aspects of apartheid, resistance, social life and culture in South Africa, and has built collections from several hundred individuals and organizations.  They describe themselves as an inside look at apartheid, because of the thousands of letters and personal papers that they have collected.  There's thousands of pictures, oral recordings, and video material too.  Very very interesting place.  The biggest downside?  Being a museum archive, there's a relatively small staff, so there are always more projects on the to-do list than the staff has hours in the day.

Oh, and "mayibuye" means “Let it return” in one of the South African languages (there are 11 official languages, and I'm not sure which one).  The word was a popular slogan and rallying cry in the anti-apartheid movement, with a number of meanings.  Two of the most common uses are referring to bringing back exiled South Africans, and to bringing back Africa to her people.

There weren't pictures allowed in the interior of the Archives, but they had a very interesting display of the history of apartheid and the anti-apartheid movement.  Lots of newspaper clippings, flyers, photos on display for the casual researcher to see as they visited the building.  It's one of those displays that really made history feel real.  And rather disturbing - some of the newspaper clippings were about the children arrested as political detainees: 1000s arrested, subjected to the same arbitrary decisions of the police, even the same beatings and tortures (electroshock, especially) as the adult detainees. And this was in the early 1980s!  Just like the District 6 Museum, it's the feeling that this shouldn't be happening in my lifetime, that people and governments should be more civilized than this. But then, we still have news today of violence and police beatings and so on in developed nations, including the US.  Maybe we just want to feel like civilization has progressed, when we're really always working against humanity's baser, more negative (and self-defeating) interests.  (And when did this become a philosophic, 'serious issues' blog??)

One last note on the UWC trip.

To get there, we had to drive about 20-30 minutes away from the downtown area to get to the campus.  In doing so, we drove through the Cape Flats area, which is one of the township areas.  These are the areas where black and colored people (distinct racial classifications under apartheid) were relocated after being removed from other areas of the city (like District 6).  These areas were typically under-supported by the city, to put it mildly.  As one librarian at UWC termed it, these are shantytowns, or squatters areas.  These areas show various levels of poverty, and even from the highway as we drove by, you could see lots and lots of tin roofs crammed in tightly next to each other.  For a little girl from the US suburbs, this was worlds away from anything I'd ever seen.

 

The librarian who was leading our tour, however, had an interesting perspective.  She drives that way from her neighborhood, past the Flats, to get to UWC for work.  She says that it's a daily reminder of why she does what she does.  As I said above, UWC was one of the earlier universities to adopt nonracial enrollment policies, and still boasts a large number of graduates coming from lower socioeconomic circumstances.  An education opens doors, makes change possible, and the library helps a student reach this goal.  A daily reminder on her commute to work.