The University of Cape Town’s Jagger Library, which housed thousands of theses, artworks, and precious documents, has been gutted. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks)
On Sunday 18 April 2021, a massive fire made its way through the Rhodes Memorial, spreading down to the University of Cape Town.
One of the affected areas is the Reading Room of the UCT Libraries’s Jagger Library.
Below is the aftermath in pictures.
The burning of the University of Cape Town’s J.W. Jagger Library on 18 April could be one of South Africa’s greatest losses of memory.
Many of the most precious records housed at the building may have been protected at lower levels by the library’s fire doors, but huge collections of literature and records may have been destroyed.