Scholars Grieve Loss Of Priceless Antiquities In Cape Town Fire

It was no ordinary library. The University of Cape Town’s Jagger Reading Room, destroyed by a runaway fire this week, was a beacon of African history and intellect.

The African studies section of the 1930s library was engulfed by flames on Sunday when a fire sparked on the foothills of the city’s iconic Table Mountain spread to the nearby campus.

Parquet-floored and lined with columns, the vast room housed a unique collection of African books and archives under its domed ceiling.

The more than 85,000 books and 3,000 films were renowned across the continent and beyond.

Academics and alumni voiced their distress on Tuesday as university staff started assessing the extent of the damage.

“The library is the heart of a university,” said Cameroonian professor Divine Fuh, head of the university’s Institute of Humanities in Africa.

With African knowledge having been “devalued for years, for centuries” the library also offered a “symbolic” space beyond its practical use, said Fuh.

Students voiced their dismay in messages on social media.

Some shared images of bright orange flames shooting through the library’s tall paned windows, plumes of smoke billowing from the roof.   

“I’m so heartbroken and sore over the UCT fire. Seeing pictures of the library on fire is sending me through the roof. My mind was shaped in that institution,” tweeted Paballo Chauke, a South African who also studied at Oxford University.