Irreplaceable historical documents were lost in a fire at South Africa’s Parliamentary Library in Cape Town in 2022. South African researcher Mosa Phadi, who is studying how ideas around blackness have evolved in her country, found a missing booklet from the library in the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) Library in Uppsala.

Phadi has chosen a study space at one of the NAI Library’s north-facing windows as her office for the day. She holds a brown booklet titled Europeans and Coloured Races, dated 1927.

“It lists recommended readings for parliamentarians who wish to deepen their knowledge about the relationships between ‘Europeans and coloured and backward races’, as it was described,” says Phadi, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of the Free State in South Africa.

Phadi’s current research project focuses on what it means to be black in South Africa and how ideas around blackness have evolved throughout the country’s history. She is currently in Uppsala on a two-month stay as part of the NAI Library Visitors’ Programme.

“My focus is on the key intellectuals who shaped the perceptions about what it means to be black, before and after the introduction of apartheid,” she says.

The project is a continuation of her 2017 dissertation titled “What it Means to be Black in Post-apartheid South Africa”.

In her work, Phadi is using old political pamphlets, books and letters as her main sources of information.

“Unfortunately, many important sources have been lost in South Africa. Some have disappeared, others have been damaged due to poor maintenance. And of course, there were also two devastating fires.”

In April 2021, the Jagger Library at the University of Cape Town caught fire, the flames engulfing irreplaceable material stored in the Special Collections archive. The vast majority of the 85,000 books and pamphlets in the African Studies published print collection and the entirety of the African Studies Film Collection, about 3,500 DVDs, were destroyed. Less than a year later, in January 2022, another fire ravaged South Africa’s parliament building in Cape Town, destroying parts of the historic Parliamentary Library.

Phadi was excited when she found a copy of Europeans and Coloured Races in the NAI Library. The booklet, written in English and Afrikaans, has reading recommendations for parliamentarians – hundreds of books and publications divided into topics such as “Mentality”, “Liquor” and “Social Life”. The curator of the list was a prominent librarian at the Parliamentary Library, Paul Ribbink.

“From what I can gather, Ribbink was something of a liberal but I don’t know so much about his leanings,” Phadi says.

The booklet provides a unique insight into perceptions about black people among South Africa’s white political class at the time, according to Phadi. In 1927, all parliamentary seats were reserved for white men, and only a fraction of non-white men were allowed to vote under a “colour-blind” permission based on property requirements in places such as Cape Province. White women were only allowed to vote in 1930.

The 1927 parliamentary reading list includes books that promoted ideas of white supremacy. However, it also mentions titles by important black intellectuals and activists such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Solomon Plaatje.

“Du Bois was one of the most important thinkers in the United States, but also had conversations with South African leaders who were fighting for political freedom. Plaatje was general secretary of the African National Congress and author of Native Life in South Africa, a very important book about the Natives Land Act of 1913, where he documented how the legislation had affected the lives of black people across the country.”

After finding the booklet from 1927 in the NAI Library, Phadi contacted the Parliamentary Library in Cape Town to ask if they had more in the same series of reading lists, which appears to have been published annually by the parliament starting in 1910.

“I had several conversations with the librarians there. They said the catalogue to trace those booklets had likely burned. They were only able to find a booklet from 1941. It is a shame since that was such a pivotal period in the country’s history. South Africa was divided, but in 1910 the whites, the English and the Afrikaners started to work towards creating a republic.”

Mosa says that the rare find of the 1927 booklet in the NAI Library has provided her with crucial pieces of information for her research project.

“It shows that white parliamentarians of the time were aware of some of the conversations of black intellectuals, of what black people were thinking. It is a very important document,” she says.

TEXT: Mattias Sköld

NAI Library’s pamphlet collection provides additional perspectives

The collection contains print ephemera, booklets, unpublished works and so-called grey literature about African countries and Africa-related subjects. The informal nature of the collection offers alternative perspectives to traditional academic literature.

“This is especially true for material originating from the African continent, where African actors and organisations express themselves instead of being written about, which is often the case in general library collections,” says Åsa Lund Moberg, head of the NAI Library.

The collection consists of an estimated 25,000 documents, a large part made up of material from, or about, African liberation movements.

“Visitors are particularly surprised by the size of this section. We’ve had visiting scholars postponing their return trip to have an extra day in the library,” says Lund Moberg.

About 70 percent of the collection is in English or French, 25 percent in Swedish or Portuguese, and 5 percent in other languages.

The material in the pamphlet collection is not available for loan since much of it is unique and irreplaceable. However, all documents can be studied at the library and may also be photocopied. While the material itself has not been digitised, it is possible to search for individual documents digitally through the library catalogue AfricaLit Plus External link, opens in new window..

How did the material end up at the NAI Library? The majority of the documents date from 1960 to 1980, a period when Sweden and other Nordic countries actively supported African liberation movements and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. During these years of intensive exchange of information and ideas between people in Africa and the Nordics, the NAI Library became a hub for collecting documents, some of which were banned in their countries of origin.

“I am proud of the NAI librarians of the past who were prescient of the material’s value for research; who collected, treasured and managed these resources so that we can enjoy them today,” says Lund Moberg.

TEXT: Mattias Sköld