Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library
Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
Lead Architects: Adjaye Associates
The Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library project is the latest Presidential Library project on the African continent that seems to follow the norm of presidents of the United States of America establishing presidential libraries after their term of office has ended. Thabo Mbeki served as the president of the Republic of South Africa from 1999 to 2008, after Nelson Mandela, the first president. Other presidential libraries on the continent include the John Evans Atta Mills Presidential Library in Cape Coast, Ghana, John A. Kufuor Presidential Library and Museum at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana and the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library in Abeokuta, Nigeria.
Designed by David Adjaye (who appears to be the architect of choice for several high-profile projects in Africa currently), the library will be built in Riviera which is an upscale suburb of Johannesburg. A striking feature of the design is a series of interconnected domed structures reminiscent of granaries in Niger and which are to be constructed out of rammed earth.
The 52,000 square foot library will also include a museum, a research center, an exhibition space, a women’s empowerment center, an auditorium, q cafe, seminar facilities, administrative offices, reading rooms, an “archival hub” that will hold artefacts and papers and documents belonging to/ pertaining to Thabo Mbeki and other African leaders, and what the architects call a “digital experience space” (ArchPaper).
David Adjaye at the SABC News live streamed “unveiling of the design” and fund-raising event of the library spoke about the search, for him and other architects “of colour”, for artistic and architectural “identity”. He recounted a story his “dear friend Okwui Enwezor” told him about how the Renaissance was reconstructed by architects and artists from “fragments” of ruins , and how this to him is “a clue to architects of colour” searching for their identity. They can use the “fragments" of the histories of what they have’ not necessarily as ruins, or as objects “to mimic… because they come from a different time”.
The Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library was first proposed around 2014, at which time is was said to be “the first of its kind in Africa” (African Studies Association). In that iteration, it would have been located it will be located on the campus of the University of South Africa (UNISA). It was planned to hold “all the papers and collectibles of President Mbeki his First Lady, Zanele Mbeki” and pitched as “a legacy of the public life of Thabo Mbeki… and a center his ideas, especially the African renaissance”
In 2014, “the decision by the Thabo Mbeki Foundation to locate the TMPL on its campus rested on the nationalistic idea that it wanted the library to be placed at an important center of learning in the continent”. The first library design was “to be a living and interactive one that would serve Africa”, and be an “African project that will be controlled by Africans and serve as a space for knowledge and research on Africa that will be used to transform Africa…” (African Studies Association)
