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A demolished six-storey building in the Al-Rimal neighbourhood contains libraries, youth centres, training for university students, and a mosque that was bombed by Israeli aircraft in raids in Gaza City, Gaza, on May 18, 2021. (Photo by Momen Faiz/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Israel’s destruction of archives, libraries strip Gazans of their past

The anti-apartheid archives provide an understanding of our past and therefore present, something Palestinians no longer have

Discovery: One of the writer’s ancestors died in an Anglo-Boer War concentration camp. Photo: Getty Images

Getting to the roots of family

In Heritage Month, we show you how to research your ancestry in South Africa — it’s not always an easy task

A picture of Clare Stewart and her son Themba. (Samantha Reinders/New Frame)

Clare: The terror of the mundane

Christopher Clark’s debut book, Clare: The killing of a gentle activist’ explores the context of the murder of an activist in KwaZulu-Natal

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu calling for peace in Katutura, Namibia in 1988. Photos: Rashid Lombard

The Rashid Lombard Archive is where it’s happening

With the induction last week of the Rashid Lombard Archive at the University of the Western Cape his photography and stories will soon be accessible to a new generation.

Freedom fighter: Dulcie September was shot dead outside the ANC offices in Paris in 1988. Her killer has never been identified.

The Portfolio: ‘Murder in Paris’ director Enver Samuel

Thirty-three years since Dulcie September’s assassination, a new documentary hopes to bring her name back into the public consciousness

‘Kanuri’, undated. (Photographer unknown)

Extract from ‘The Journey’: Responses to the archive

This sequence of texts was written in response to various photographs of Nigeria made between 1920 and 1929 that form part of the Colonial Office photographic collection

War is the backdrop of The Shadow King, by Maaza Mengiste, which has been shortlisted for the Booker. (Photo: Nina Subin)

Maaza Mengiste: ‘We are now catching up with the past’

As war drums beat again in Ethiopia, author Maaza Mengiste finds new language to memorialise the Second Italo-Ethiopian War

A protest meeting against removals, eNanda, KwaZulu-Natal, 1982. (Omar Badsha)

Omar Badsha: Recording the roles of the ordinary

Saho’s Omar Badsha believes in the power of people telling their own stories, but more funding to support this practice is crucial

Living memory: Sylvia Arthur has made a point of centring literature of Africa and the diaspora in her library

Meet the founder of Accra’s one-woman library

Sylvia Arthur founded the Library for Africa and the African Diaspora to house her collection and share it with other readers

Sunny Ade’s Festac ’77 constitutes one of the many albums celebrating the festival

Reproducing Festac ’77: A secret among a family of millions

An interview with Chimurenga founder Ntone Edjabe about his latest project

“Mandela and Animism”, a piece by Marvin Carstens, which is on display at the Provoke/Ukuchukumisa/Daag-Uit exhibition at Nelson Mandela University.

Mandela archive as a living system

The existing Mandela biographies don’t tell the whole story

Department fails to protect archives and democracy

The archival system is in trouble. To think that we can have a well-ordered land reform process is unrealistic.

Writers Athol Fugard

How to keep SA’s literary treasures in the country

If public institutions are to be trusted, they have to fight to defend their holdings, but preserving our literary archives is complicated.