UCT Sustainability and the SDGs 2022 - Report - Page 33
UTA-Do African Cities Workshop
The phrase ‘uta-do’ is commonly used in Nairobi, Kenya
which can be translated as “what are you going to do
about it?”. The UTA-Do workshops, the first of which was
hosted in Nairobi in May 2022, are part of the strategy
by the ACC to develop a richer dialogue among African
scholars on issues of African urban change.
ACC work in policy
In 2022, the ACC’s work had significant policy impact,
including:
Africa’s Urbanisation
Dynamics 2022: The
economic power of
Africa’s cities
A report by the OECD and
United Nations
Walking and Cycling
in Africa: Evidence
and Good Practice to
Inspire Action
Recording and preserving our
cultural heritage
The Bleek and Lloyd collection – a vast array of
notebooks, drawings, photographs and lexicons compiled
by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd in the 1800s – records
the cosmologies (the social belief systems humans have
held at different times and in different places about the
order of the world, the universe and themselves in it)
and languages of the |xam and !kun people who were
amongst the earliest inhabitants of southern Africa.
This collection offers insight into precolonial times and
the lives of people – including those in the Kalahari,
Northern Cape, northern Namibia, Angola and Tanzania
– about whom little else would otherwise be known.
UCT’s Centre for Curating the Archive (CCA) has been
working since the early 2000s to digitise and publish the
collection.
In 2021, the CCA secured funding to make the collection
widely accessible beyond scholarly study. In 2022, the
CCA were able to continue their work to make the Bleek
and Lloyd Collection a ‘living collection’, taking copies
of the watercolours and drawings to the present-day
communities from which these documents originated.
This allowed the descendants of the original communities
to give feedback and insights, documenting how life has
changed for these communities over generations.
A report by the United
Nations Environment
Programme
Above: In 2022, UCT’s historical Irma Stern Museum invited
Grade 11 learners doing Visual Art and Design to participate
in a “Rethinking Irma Stern” project.
Other projects working to
preserve African heritage
at UCT in 2022 include the
following:
The Five-Hundred Year Archive: a digital research
platform making available resources from the last
500 years of southern African history.
UCT as a green space
UCT, nestled at the base of Devil’s Peak and Table
Mountain National Park, boasts not only beautiful views
and green spaces, but also important historical sites and
museums. As part of the university’s open campus policy,
members of the public can access the campus to enjoy
these spaces.
IsiXhosa Intellectual Traditions Digital Archive: the
isiXhosa Intellectual Traditions Project, entailing
digitising, archiving, preserving, and researching
early isiXhosa texts (especially newspapers and
books) produced in the 1800s and early 1900s.
Sustainability and the SDGs 2022 – 33
