The fire this time A precious African-studies collection burns in Cape Town

T HE VIEW from the steps of Sarah Baartman Hall at the University of Cape Town (UCT) is a reminder of the city’s natural beauty and difficult history. The shadow of Table Mountain looms over the neoclassical building, renamed in 2018 to commemorate Baartman, a Khoisan woman who in 1810 was shipped to Europe to appear in freak shows. She replaced Leander Starr Jameson, a lackey of Cecil Rhodes who staged a calamitous attempt to start a war on behalf of his patron. Until 2015 a statue of Rhodes stood at the bottom of the steps, gazing out at the Atlantic Ocean and the city he made his own, the headquarters of his southern African empire.

“And there”, says Ujala Satgoor, director of UCT’s libraries, looking to her right, “is the famous Jagger library.” Or rather, there it was. On April 18th fireballs from a conflagration on the mountainside engulfed the building and nearby halls of residence (the cause of the blaze is unclear). The contents endured the twin effects of flames and, once firemen arrived, hosepipes, leaving thousands of works charred or sodden.

Because they were held in a basement, some books of the highest monetary value were spared. These were mostly from the Western canon. But in a bitter twist for a library that may have done more than any other to enhance scholarship of Africa, the most extensive damage was to its African-studies collection. Almost 100,000 of its roughly 130,000 books were destroyed (the count is ongoing). “It was truly a disaster,” says Ms Satgoor.

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