SA gives R1m for Timbuktu library
Gabi Khumalo
4 May 2008
South Africa will contribute R1-million towards the building of a library in the historic Malian city of Timbuktu - where ancient manuscripts dating back to the early 13th century were found - as part of bi-national agreement between the two countries, says Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan.
Presenting his budget vote in Parliament in Cape Town this week, Jordan said this stipulates commitment to fund-raising and providing assistance toward the construction of a new library and archive for the Ahmed Baba Institute.
Other aims are to assist in marketing the heritage value of the Timbuktu Manuscripts, especially their conservation.
"We are pleased to announce that a separate trust fund was set up to fund raise from private and other donors towards the realisation of this project," Jordan said.
"Significantly, the Timbuktu Manuscripts are the first New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) cultural project, which requires the support of government departments, including arts and culture."
After visiting Mali in 2001, President Thabo Mbeki pledged to assist with the restoration and conservation of the ancient manuscripts in Timbuktu, which were in a poor condition.
An inter-governmental agreement between South Africa and Mali was signed in 2002 and the project to restore the Timbuktu manuscripts was officially launched in 2003.
The project has since been declared an official South African presidential project and has also been endorsed by Nepad as its first cultural project.
The agreement expresses the two countries' commitment to undertake a government-to-government project aimed at conserving the manuscripts at the Ahmed Baba Centre and at rebuilding the library and archival infrastructure of the institute.
Speaking during an SA-Mali Timbuktu project fundraising dinner three years ago, Mbeki said that African countries must contest the colonial denial of their history and initiate their own conversations and dialogues about their past.
"We need our own historians and our own scholars to interpret the history of our continent, and to undertake, with a degree of urgency, a process of reclamation and assertion," Mbeki said at the time.
Source: BuaNews
