Academics across the world are still waiting to hear what documents might have survived the fire that engulfed U-C-T’s Jagger Library.
The library housed the institution’s special collections, many of which deal with indigenous knowledge.
Patric Tariq Mellet was published extensively for the liberation movement in exile in the 1980’s.
He spoke to Clarence Ford about the fire on Monday.
Mellet stored over 1,500 items in the Jagger library – and fears that valuable insights into that part of history may be lost.
But he says he’s most concerned about the fate of unique material about the indigenous Khoi and San people , and Xhosa newspapers from the colonial era that were in the library.
Like other academics, Mellet is hoping that many of these treasures were digitised, and that reports are true that safety features were activated to preserve at least some of the collections.
