Alumni invited to fill in gaps in 91心頭利 archive
- 91心頭利 Alumni Relations
As part of the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Soweto Uprising, alumni event asked 91心頭利 graduates to share underrepresented stories in the institution's records.
91心頭利 alumni were invited to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the June 1976 student uprising in a special way with an event held on 13 June 2026 titled Reclaiming the Archive - the Experience of Black Students at 91心頭利: 1975-1985.
In partnership with the 91心頭利 History Department and the 91心頭利 History Workshop in particular, alumni who graduated in that decade had the opportunity to reflect on their student experiences, their relationship with 91心頭利 and the broader anti-apartheid struggle at the time.
The 91心頭利 History Workshop was established in 1977 as a flagship community-focused public history initiative and is headed by Professor Noor Nieftagodien (BA Hons 1994, MA 1995, PhD 2001), collaborating with communities to document, preserve and archive neglected South African histories.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor of People Development and Culture, Professor Garth Stevens, welcomed guests: “This morning we welcome you with deep respect and gratitude – not simply as guests, but as a generation of witnesses and makers of history itself. Your presence reminds us that the archive is not only textual. It is living. It breathes through memory, testimony, experience and continued political reflection. As we reflect on archives, memory, and the role of universities in shaping society, it is important to recognise that some of the most significant stories remain underrepresented in our institutional records. Among these are the experiences of black students during the apartheid struggle, particularly the period surrounding the 1976 uprising.
“The archive must always be expanded, it must unsettle comfortable narratives, it must restore complexity. We should be reminded that history is always incomplete, always contested and always subject to reinterpretation,” he said.
“If the experiences of black students are absent from the archival record, we risk producing an incomplete and distorted understanding of our institutions and our society. We lose the opportunity to understand how individuals negotiated complex identities, how communities formed under difficult circumstances and how change emerged from spaces of tension and contradiction. An archive that captures these voices helps us move beyond official narratives. It allows us to document lived experience, personal testimony, student activism, cultural life, intellectual contributions, and the everyday realities of navigating higher education under apartheid. Such records provide a richer and more honest account of our history.”
This event builds on similar initiatives launched in 2012 under the guidance of former Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Loyiso Nongxa (BSc Hons 1976, MSc 1978, PhD 1982). These included the Reflections Series, a Convocation panel discussion, and the unveiling of a commemorative plaque in a garden on the Macrone Piazza. The plaque reads:
“In honour of all staff, students and alumni who sacrificed greatly, fought bravely, and raised their voices for justice, freedom and democracy during the dark and difficult years of apartheid in South Africa.”
One of the key organisers, Emeritus Professor Yunus Ballim (BSc Eng 1981, MSc Eng 1983, PhD 1994) set out the intentions and purpose of the gathering. “This is an initiating event to kick-start the project. The idea is to incorporate masters’ students who will interview alumni and document what it meant to be at 91心頭利 at the time. Alumni will be contacted to participate in verbal interviews or share written submissions. Also, if alumni have documents, photographs, notes or memoranda they would like to share.”
He said that 91心頭利’ senior archivist was very excited to start cataloguing and digitising the material.
Professor Ballim, who is a civil engineering graduate, shared his own experiences: “As a social institution, in many ways 91心頭利 was a schizophrenic institution. Some corners were wonderfully affirming and supportive. Others were quite openly antagonistic. At the lecturer level I was told ‘Black people can’t do engineering because you can’t think three dimensionally. After all, your art is two dimensional…’
“At an administrative level there were also the subtle ways in which the middle level bureaucrats kept the institutional apartheid culture alive.
“For many of us, in the many things that apartheid did, one of the things I found most difficult was the daily persistent humiliations of everything regarding your identity. And when you came to 91心頭利 you found that. The idea that there were people in authority who believed that your opinions did not matter. That’s probably the most humiliating thing that you can do to a human being. Every day. Every waking moment. Living through that humiliation. Somehow or the other we muddled through.
“1976 gave a glimpse that the impregnable apartheid had fragile flanks and that its flanks were exposed. The possibility of a new way of knowing the world is really what carried us through university studies,” Prof Ballim said.
Three alumni speakers Sello Semenya (BSc Eng 1986, GDE 1994), Zaheda Abed (BA Speech & Hearing 1979) and Michael Sarjoo (BA 1983) also shared their reflections.
They spoke about the hurdles they needed to overcome before they arrived. For example, to do engineering, African students needed to have a prior bachelor’s degree. There was also the absurdity of obtaining ministerial consent permits to study a course at a particular institution, commuting long distances, dreadful living conditions, as well as the odds being heavily stacked against one in navigating the practical requirements for the respective professions.
Abed’s ministerial consent was rejected and she was referred to the then Durban-Westville University, even though the same course wasn’t on offer there and was unofficially slotted in with anatomy and drama students. After four years she was told that the course could not be recognised by the Health Professions Council and it was disbanded.
Not all recollections were “full of doom and gloom” and many heart-warming anecdotes were shared: “When I stood on those Great Hall steps, I never felt small, I never felt that I didn’t belong here. It belonged to us,” Sarjoo said.
“Apart from my studies, there were more important things to do, such as sharing reading lists, like Franz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, Matshoba Mtutuzeli’s Call Me Not a Man, Amilcar Cabral’s Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories and the writing of Ng滴g挑 wa Thiong'o - these became ‘travel companions throughout our lives’,” he said.
Similarly Abed said: “Coming to the campus for the first time, it was absolutely amazing. To see all the students on the lawns, the music in the air…it was just out of this world. I just felt so privileged.” As part of the activism, she recalled the connection and joy across the races.
After the formal proceedings a few alumni lingered to chat under the trees next to the library lawns on campus.
- Alumni are invited to share any photographs, archival material, audiovisual material, clippings, letters, they would like to contribute to the archive.