Johannesburg – United States of America Ambassador Patrick Gaspard gave Liliesleaf Farm CEO Nicholas Wolpe $103 329 on Wednesday, to help conserve rare items of significant value and relevance to the history of South Africa’s liberation movement.
The US grant will enable Liliesleaf to digitise oral histories, rare books, letters from prison, scrapbooks, strategic organisational documents, and works produced in exile so they may be studied by future scholars.
Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, Johannesburg, was selected to receive the grant, which comes from the US Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation (AFCP), following a worldwide competition for funds dedicated by the US government to the preservation of cultural sites, cultural objects, and forms of traditional cultural expression in more than 100 countries.
Liliesleaf Farm was the headquarters of the African National Congress’s military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) until it was raided by the apartheid government’s security police in 1963.
They captured several members of MK’s high command as well as plans describing its attempts to overthrow the government. This lead to the Rivonia Trial where MK commander Nelson Mandela and several other leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Speaking at the signing ceremony for the grant at Liliesleaf Farm, Wolpe said, “this AFCP grant will enable the Liliesleaf Trust to commence with the conservation and preservation of invaluable historical material.
“Liliesleaf is committed to ensuring that our past is not only conserved and preserved but is also accessible and available through the digitisation of all material in the archive,” Gaspard said.
“The preservation of the rare materials and documents of the courageous men and women who fought against apartheid ensures that future generations will continue to learn from the lessons they taught us.”
Since the AFCP’s inception in South Africa in 2003, the US government has provided more than $1 million for 13 projects that recognise South Africa’s cultural heritage.
These include preservation at the Cradle of Humankind UNESCO World Heritage site, the collection of oral histories of former residents of District Six in Cape Town, who were forcibly removed from their homes by the apartheid government in the mid-1960s and a $500,000 grant to Iziko Museums for the conservation of objects recovered from the 18th Century São José Slave Shipwreck in Cape Town.
African News Agency