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14 September 2020 | Story Thabo Kessah | Photo Sonia du Toit (Kaleidoscope Studio)
Dr Jared McDonald
Dr Jared McDonald is the lead contact for Southern African research on the One More Voice digital project.
A new digital humanities project, One More Voice, based at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, brings together a number of researchers from the US, the UK, and Africa. These researchers include Dr Jared McDonald from the Department of History on the Qwaqwa Campus, who is a project scholar and the lead contact for Southern African research. 

“One More Voice intends to uncover and highlight long-neglected materials in the British imperial archive that illuminate the important roles played by African guides and assistants to famed Victorian explorers of the nineteenth century, such as David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley. It also aims to recover lost voices and contributions that were either glossed over or deliberately excised by European explorers when recounting their travels in Africa. These materials appear in multiple forms, such as travel diaries, letters, autobiographies, maps, travel narratives, testimonies and oral histories, though they have seldom received scholarly or public attention,” said Dr McDonald, who is also Assistant Dean: the Humanities.

“This project challenges the notion of an intrepid European explorer ‘discovering’ new information and collecting data all by himself. Rather, it highlights that African guides, assistants, and companions played an instrumental role in these expeditions and they too left an archival footprint,” he added.

Dr McDonald further revealed that the project is trying to “recover unknown materials, theorise about these materials, and to see this aspect of history in a new and much more balanced way, one not just dominated by contemporaneous nineteenth century European perspectives.” 

Resource for teachers and students

The project welcomes all potential external collaborators based at archives, libraries, museums, and universities. Such collaboration can take multiple forms, such as identifying relevant primary materials, encoding primary materials for digital publication, critical scholarship of digitally curated items, and creating digital exhibitions. “All primary source materials collected by One More Voice are released under a Creative Commons licence, making them available for use by teachers, students, the public, and in scholarship via a user-friendly digital platform,” said Dr McDonald.

The project’s newly launched website is expanding at a rapid rate, offering high-resolution images of manuscript items and original artefacts, edited transcriptions, and critical essays. The digital platform brings to life a variety of African voices that have long been forgotten in the archives.

As the name of the project suggests, there is always one more voice to recover from the archives. It is directed by Prof Adrian Wisnicki, who is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

News Archive

“Deploy your education and not connections,” Chancellor tells graduates
2012-05-16

 

Qwaqwa Autumn Graduation
Photo: Thabo Kessah
16 May 2012

Our Qwaqwa Campus conferred 424 degrees, diplomas and certificates at this year’s autumn graduation ceremony held on 12 May 2012.

Amongst the degrees conferred were two doctorates in Polymer Science, two Master’s of Arts in Geography and African Languages, respectively, five Master’s of Science degrees in Physics (3) and Polymer Science (2) and 37 honours degrees in Education, Zoology, Physics, Botany and Polymer Science.

In their congratulatory messages, both the Vice-Rector: Institutional Affairs, Prof. Teuns Verschoor, and the Chancellor, Dr Khotso Mokhele, challenged the graduates to start focusing their attention beyond their graduation on what they both referred to as “the real world”.

“Graduation ceremonies are a fantastic event, but you must never lose sight of appreciating the support given by those around you,” said Dr Mokhele.

“This hall was full of shouting and yes, you must bask in that glory, knowing that you have achieved part of your goals. Yes, this is your moment, so shine. You deserve it. You have earned it.”

“However, this noise also means you must go out there and face the real world. You are graduating in a model country on how people can reconcile, despite their painful and divided past. You deserve all the accolades, but that model country is disappearing before your eyes. How can you mess up what Mandela, Biko, Sobukwe, Nardine Gordimer lived and fought for? How can you mess up such a good thing?” Dr Mokhele asked of an attentive audience that included proud parents and siblings, as well as educators and learners from the Thabo Mofutsanyana District.

“Go out there and deploy your education and not your connections, as these are embedded in corruption. Go out there and help get rid of the patronage system where hard-workers are more likely to be constructively dismissed as they stand in the way of those with corrupt tendencies. Save this country from becoming another Zimbabwe. Let us do whatever it takes to save this country. Let these matriculants who are here today want to walk that red carpet with pride in the next few years,”,said Dr Mokhele.

Dignitaries in attendance included the former Chief Minister of the former Qwaqwa homeland, Dr T K Mopeli; the Executive Mayor of the Dihlabeng Local Municipality, Councillor Tjhetane Mofokeng; Dr SWF Moloi (Thabo Mofutsanyana Education District) and representatives from various government departments.
 

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