We are excited to share that the Nelson Mandela Foundation has recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s estate.
This means that Mama Winnie’s archives will be stored in the Foundation’s archive repository alongside Madiba’s archives, temporarily until which the estate decides on what to do with the archive in the long term. Mama Winnie’s archives are huge and incorporate various documents, photographs, artefacts, gifts and awards.
The Winnie Madikizela-Mandela archives has been well received at the Foundation and the Archives and Research team cannot wait to start the process of sorting it and creating a finding aid, and thereafter it will be digitised. Coming off the back of the Table Mountain wildfire which wreaked havoc on the University of Cape Town’s historically significant sites like the Jagger Library, which housed most of the African studies collection that included scarce and rare publications dating back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, the need to digitise has never been so prevalent.
Everyone including the public will have access to the collection as soon as it has been digitised which they can use for research purposes and be knowledgeable about the history and life of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
The Foundation is honoured and privileged to have received the opportunity to digitise and archive the history, memory and legacy of Mama Winnie - Mother of the Nation. We are also honoured to contribute to the preservation of her archives for future generations as conservation and preservation is one of the core principles of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.