“Libraries have an essential role in the decolonial movement,” says Rhodes University Library Services Director, Nomawethu Danster.
Rhodes University’s Cory Library, in collaboration with the Five Hundred Year Archive project at the University of Cape Town’s History Department, has digitised some of the works of Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi, one of the first black South African writers to be published in isiXhosa in the early twentieth century.
Nomawethu Danster, Rhodes University Library Services Director. Pic sourced from https://www.ru.ac.za/latestnews
The digitised works of the author, who is said to have advocated against colonialism and promoted the use of African languages, will be accessible to all via a digital platform.
Danster believes that projects like this are needed to decolonise information.
“What drives the library, and maybe myself in this case, is that the Global South have become consumers of information from the Global North… it is also a wake-up call for us to say, ‘…as knowledge custodians in Makhanda, what are we doing with what the local archive has to offer?’ We need to help change how things are done.”
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