An Overview of the African National Congress Archives at the University of Fort Hare

Abstract

Located in the small town of Alice in South Africa's Eastern Cape Province, the University of Fort Hare (UFH) was established in 1916 and for many years was the only institution of higher education in sub-equatorial Africa which was open to black students. Therefore, among Fort Hare's alumni are well-known African nationalists and politicians such as Oliver Tambo and Govan Mbeki of the African National Congress (ANC); Robert Sobukwe, who founded the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC); Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP); Eluid Mathu, who was the first African member of the Kenya Legislative Council,;President Robert Mugabe and Herbert Chitepo of Zimbabwe; Prime Minister Ntsu Mokhehle of Lesotho; former Prime Minister Fwanyanga Mulikita of Uganda; and many others. While Fort Hare was taken over by the apartheid government in 1959 and incorporated into a network of ethnic universities within the homeland system, from the 1960s to early 1990s various banned liberation movements were active on campus and students periodically clashed with security forces. As a result, “[i]t is thus not surprising that with its venerable history of resistance and struggle, the UFH was chosen to be the repository of most of the archives of the Liberation Front.”