By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Photo Credit:Adjaye Associates.
Former president Thabo Mbeki hopes the presidential library will be at the centre of preserving SA’s and Africa’s history and heritage.
Mbeki said the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library will be a place where people can engage one another and maybe draw inspiration from leaders like Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda and Kwame Nkrumah, among others.
“We will be able to say, ‘Come to Johannesburg, come to this tourism place here, to see how the South Africans, the Africans, are engaging one another in the context of their past, saying ‘but what do we do about ourselves?’.
“I’m sure that all of us here, certainly the South Africans present here today, would be, I hope, very conscious of this. That indeed one of the main challenges we face is talking to one another, saying, ‘What do we do about ourselves, about this country which has too many problems, very many bad things, strange things?’
“Let the rest of the world come and maybe learn a lesson that this is what the Africans do,” Mbeki said.
The city of Johannesburg announced that it will host the library, which council speaker Nonceba Molwele said would contribute to the diversification of the city’s tourism and heritage offerings. Molwele said the library will become a must-see landmark feature on the continent and a unique selling point for Joburg.
Commonly this milestone is seen as an opportunity to realise the ambition of the dreams of President Mbeki to advance and empower an African Renaissance,” she said.
The Thabo Mbeki Foundation and the city have signed a three-year agreement to develop the site in Killarney that has been earmarked for the library.
Eight domed structures built from rammed earth will distinguish the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library that architecture studio Adjaye Associates is developing in Johannesburg.
Set to be built in the suburb of Riviera, the library will pay homage to the country’s second post-apartheid president, Thabo Mbeki, and celebrate ancient and contemporary African history.
Among its facilities will be a research centre and museum, which Adjaye Associates hopes will establish it as an “anchor point” for local and international scholars.
“The Thabo Mbeki Centre presents an opportunity to realise the ambition of the dreams of President Thabo Mbeki to advance and empower an African renaissance,” said the studio’s founder,David Adjaye.
“The architecture of the library taps into the collective memory of the continent through the establishment of a new historical centre for African consciousness in which knowledge, education and sustenance are nurtured in the representation and intelligence of the continent.”
Once complete, the 5,400-square-metre Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library will comprise two levels – one of which will be concealed below ground.