In 2018, South African Heritage Publishers approached UP Special Collections about using Special Collections material, particularly the Van Warmelo collection, as source material for their Our Story series of books. This series focuses on black history stories and is written in English for the First Additional Language learner specifically. One of the main obstacles to this proposed project was that the material in the Van Warmelo Collection is in various indigenous languages, and is also fairly idiomatic for the period in which it was written. This limited accessibility to the collection.

The Van Warmelo Collection comprises over 500 manuscripts in 97 boxes, concerning different South African indigenous groups. These include manuscripts on the Xhosa, Zulu, Swazi, Tsonga, South Sotho (Sesotho, Tswana, North-Sotho (Sepedi) and Venda (Tshivenḓa). These manuscripts include detailed information about the history, traditions, way of life, dress, laws, warfare and religion of the groups as well as the traditional life-stages that an individual goes through from birth to death. Dr van Warmelo collected this information over a period of 30 to 40 years and it forms part of his unpublished legacy. The collection also includes a number of photographs, albums, and cultural samples. This collection preserves the heritage of the people of South Africa, which was previously considered to be unwritten.

This collection has been digitised in its entirety by the DLS Digitisation Services and is available on UPSpace. SA Heritage Publishers has been working to translate the manuscripts, and amazing stories have come to light. A call has been put out to assist in finding the relatives of the original authors of the manuscripts, which has been very positively received.  SA Heritage Publisher’s has been able to identify the details of a number of the authors from the manuscripts, and these are listed on the SA Heritage Publisher’s “Ancestral Voices” webpage (see link below). Progress has already been made in tracking down families of the original authors of these manuscripts, and some burial sites of authors have even been identified.

In November of this year, SA Heritage Publishers was awarded the prestigious Golden Shield Heritage Award for their work in Heritage Education. This is a well-deserved recognition of the important work they are doing and the DLS is proud to be partnering with them in ensuring that this treasure trove is preserved and made accessible for current and future generations.

Terence Ball director of South African Heritage Publishers receives award.

To view the Van Warmelo Collection click here.

For more information on the Ancestral Voices Project click here.