BAB Interviews and Conversations

A long-lasting collaboration and friendship has ended: BAB is mourning the passing of anti-apartheid journalist and writer Ruth Weiss at the age of 101. We are humbled by her unwavering trust over nearly 30 years in our work of curating her remarkable audio and paper archives. Her acoustic archives alone comprise some 180 tapes with interview, press conference and music recordings spanning several...

Doek! is an online literary magazine published in Windhoek since 2019. It has brought to the front new fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and visual art —to much acclaim. Experimental and daring in various ways, its beautifully curated editions have enriched Africa’s literary and visual landscape quite unexpectedly. Early on, Rémy Ngamije, one of the co-founders, invited the Basler Afrika Bibliographien...

Barbara Müller fungierte von 1973 bis 1988 als Präsidentin des Komitees «kämpfendes afrika» (ka), das 1971 als politische Solidaritätsorganisation Medic’ Angola begann. Zunächst eng mit dem maoistisch geprägten «proletarischen Internationalismus» der Kommunistischen Part der Schweiz verbunden, konnte das sich seit 1976 «kämpfendes afrika» nennende Komitee besonders enge Kontakte zu einigen Befreiu...

In view of South African journalist Ruth Weiss’s 90th birthday in 2014, BAB’ s archivists invited her in 2013 to a public conversation in the series “Archivgespräche” – “Archive talk”. In this podcast episode, conducted in both German and English, we provide an extract from the live-recorded conversation held in Basel. It includes introductions to Ruth Weiss’s collections by the archivists Dag Hen...

1973 als Teil einer Solidaritätsbewegung gegen Kolonialismus, Rassismus und Ausbeutung in der Schweiz entstanden, konzentrierte sich das Afrika-Komitee in Basel auf eine kritische Solidaritäts- und Informationsarbeit mit und zur Zivilgesellschaft in Afrika. Nach 50 Jahren löst sich das Komitee 2024 auf. Mitbegründer:innen Gertrud Baud und Hans-Ueli Stauffer reflektierten bereits 2018 in einem Gesp...

The Namibian artist Tuli Mekondjo reflects in this conversation about her work in the colonial image archives of the Basler Afrika Bibliographien and how this led her to initiate new artistic practices and conceptualise and design a new art performance. «Ousie Martha» references generations of African laundry women in Namibia as wage labourers in white settler homes, often depicted in settler fami...

Barbara Müller fungierte von 1973 bis 1988 als Präsidentin des Komitees «kämpfendes afrika» (ka), das 1971 in Zürich als politische Solidaritätsorganisation Medic’ Angola begann. Zunächst eng mit dem maoistisch geprägten «proletarischen Internationalismus» der Kommunistischen Partei der Schweiz verbunden, konnte das sich seit 1976 ka nennende Komitee besonders enge Kontakte zu einigen antikolonial...

Susy Greuter erinnert sich im Gespräch mit dem BAB Archivar Dag Henrichsen an ihr vielfältiges Engagement zum afrikanischen Kontinent, zunächst als Studentin der Soziologie und Ethnologie an der Universität Zürich und im Komitee Südliches Afrika (1975). Das Komitee Südliches Afrika verstand sich als Abspaltung des maoistisch ausgerichteten «kämpfenden afrika» und war nur eines von vielen Komitees...

Beatrice Felber Rochat erinnert sich im Gespräch mit dem BAB Archivar Dag Henrichsen an ihr frühes Engagement in der von christlichen Frauen gegründeten transnationalen Solidaritätsgruppe «Südafrika-Boykott». Die Boykott-Gruppe organisierte gegen Ende der 1970er Jahre öffentliche Anti-Apartheid Aktionen in Basel, trat für den Boykott von Konsumprodukten und von multinationalen Firmen und Banken, d...

1973 als Teil einer Solidaritätsbewegung gegen Kolonialismus, Rassismus und Ausbeutung in der Schweiz entstanden, konzentriert sich das Afrika-Komitee in Basel bis heute auf eine kritische Solidaritäts- und Informationsarbeit mit und zur Zivilgesellschaft in Afrika. In diesem Auszug aus einem Gespräch mit dem BAB Archivar Dag Henrichsen vom April 2016 reflektiert die Mitbegründerin des Komitee’s,...

1973 als Teil einer Solidaritätsbewegung gegen Kolonialismus, Rassismus und Ausbeutung in der Schweiz entstanden, konzentriert sich das Afrika-Komitee in Basel bis heute auf eine kritische Solidaritäts- und Informationsarbeit mit und zur Zivilgesellschaft in Afrika. In diesem Auszug aus einem Gespräch mit dem BAB Archivar Dag Henrichsen vom November 2015 reflektiert der Mitbegründer des Komitees,...

Lewis Nkosi (1936–2010), born in Embo (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa), was an acclaimed journalist, writer and professor of literature in various African and European countries as well as in the USA. Living in exile since 1960, he resided in Basel between 1997 and 2010. On 11th November 1999 he gave a reading from his yet unpublished novel “Mandela’s Ego” (2006) at the BAB. In the extracts of the au...

Carol and Ron Gestwicki, a couple from northern America, worked for the Anglican Church in Namibia from 1964 to 1966. Ron worked as a priest in Windhoek’s African township, the Old Location, and as such worked closely with oppositional leaders such as Hosea Kutako and Clemens Kapuuo. Carol, a trained nurse, gave courses in the Red Cross clinic of the Old Location and also evening and Sunday classe...

Freedom Tichaona Nyamubaya (1958 – 2015) was a Zimbabwean freedom fighter, activist and poet. In 1975, she left what was then Rhodesia to join the Zimbabwe National Liberation Army (ZANLA) in Mozambique. She achieved the rank of Female Field Operation Commander and was elected the Secretary for Education in the first ZANU Women's League conference in 1979. After independence she worked as a rural...

Die BAB blicken 2021 auf 50 Jahre Institutsgeschichte zurück. 1971 von Carl Schlettwein als Bibliothek und Verlag gegründet, um Publikationen insbesondere zu Namibia unabhängig von kolonialen Rahmenbedingungen zugänglich zu machen, gewährleistet die Carl Schlettwein Stiftung seit 1994 das Bestehen der BAB als Namibia Resource Centre und Southern Africa Library, inklusive eines Archivs. In dem Gesp...

In this extract from an interview Ruth Weiss conducted with Maryknoll Sister Janice McLaughlin (1942–2021) in Harare (Zimbabwe) on 30th July 1982, Sister Janice reflects on her decision to move to Rhodesia where she worked for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in 1977. Documenting atrocities of the Zimbabwean war of liberation she was arrested and deported, only to continue to work fro...

Kenneth Kaunda (1924–2021) was the first State President of independent Zambia. On March 30, 1977 Ruth Weiss conducted an interview with Kaunda in Lusaka on the occasion of the visit of Nikolai Podgorny, then President of the Soviet Union. In this extract from the interview, Kaunda provides an assessment of the Cold War situation in southern Africa, Zambia’s position as a member of the Non-Aligned...

In the 1970s and 1980s, the political solidarity committee “kämpfendes afrika” (fighting africa) in Zurich engaged in the support for African liberation movements. Its archives of papers, images and sound recordings are today housed at the Basler Afrika Bibliographien. The extracts of a recording presented here document an event of the “ka” on 1st March 1980 in the Zurich Volkshaus. Mike Muendane...

Lewis Nkosi (1936–2010), born in Embo (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa), was an acclaimed journalist, writer and professor of literature in various African and European countries as well as in the USA. Living in exile since 1960, he resided in Basel between 1997 and 2010. On 11th November 1999 he gave a reading from his novels at the BAB. In this extract of the ensuing conversation, he talks about his...

In this extract from an interview conducted by Ruth Weiss on September 28th, 1979, the then “first and only” Namibian medical doctor, Libertina Inaviposa Amathila (née Appolus), also known as Libertine Amathila, talks about studying in exile and becoming a doctor as well as women’s education, gender issues and life in the Namibian refugee camps in Angola and Zambia. Amathila, who had fled South Af...

Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, doctoral student at the University of Cape Town, performed the “Ondaanisa yo Pomudhime” (Dance of the Rubber Tree) at the Basler Afrika Bibliographien and inside its archives shortly before this conversation took place with the BAB archivist. He reflects about the challenges of “decolonizing the archive” and his roles as a performance artist in “cleansing a space whic...

Vilho Shigwedha is a senior lecturer at the Department of Geography, History and Environmental Studies at the Unversity of Namibia in Windhoek. He, Martha Akawa and a group of students visited the Basler Afrika Bibliographien in August 2015. In this interview he talks about becoming a historian and researching the controversial history of the Cassinga massacre in southern Angola in 1978 during the...

In this extract of a conversation with the BAB archivist about his audio research archive, Patrick Harries, who passed away in 2016, reflects about his early career as a historian, researcher and lecturer at the University of Cape Town in the 1970s and 1980s

In this extract from a Lunch Talk with a Basler Afrika Bibliographien librarian and a wider audience, the South African comix artist Anton Kannemeyer reflects about the early history of comix and cartoons in South Africa, his own career and the history of the controversial Bittercomix No 1, published in 1992

João Ribeiro is manager, documentalist and producer for film and TV production at Kanema Produçoes Maputo and independent film director in Mozambique. He visited the Basler Afrika Bibliographien (BAB) in September 2015 at the occasion of showing his film „O Ultimo Voo do Flamingo“ in the BAB film series „mozambique in motion“. In this interview with the BAB Managing Director he talks about the cha...