The Sunday News
Cultural Heritage Pathisa Nyathi in Oxford, UK
ALONG Broad Street in Central Oxford is a cream-coloured historic building that is undergoing refurbishment. The street is teeming with surging and pouring crowds of tourists with cameras trained at the exquisite building from within which there are whinnying sounds of pneumatic drills, of hammers striking on the chisels and shovels collecting debris from the construction site.
Open lavishly decorated double-decker buses, bursting to the seams, zoom past laden with curious tourists with prying eyes-extravagantly feasting them on the plethora of historical buildings resplendent with elegantly executed sculptures. Their spires, towering and impressive, dare the uncharacteristically naked heavens. The architecture is awesome, traceable to the middle ages and beyond. The tourists, teeming like animated maggots in putrid venison have come to sample the abundant English heritage.
Cyclists and pedestrians intermingle as they gaze at the heritage wonders of Oxford City. One of these buildings is the New Bodleian Library, in reality not a single library, but several of them scattered throughout the academic city to service the University of Oxford, which comprises no less than 30 university colleges. The new Bodleian Library was built in the 1930s and was reinforced during World War II, and is scheduled for official opening in the English Spring of 2015.
Oxford’s libraries are among the most celebrated in the world, not only for the vast collections of books and manuscripts, but also for their aesthetically striking buildings of are architectural design. The library was first opened to Oxford University scholars in 1602, though the first library for the university as distinct from the university colleges began around 1320. The New Bodleian Library will re-open as the Weston Bodleian Library with improved facilities and space for its over 11 million printed items in addition to 80 000 e-journals and vast quantities of materials in many other formats.
As part of forward publicity for the refurbished Weston Bodleian Library there is a carefully selected sample of items to be found in the new facility. The presentation is given in the form of letters of the alphabet, ranging from A to Z. Each letter of the alphabet stands for an individual of note who made a considerable contribution to the history of human endeavour ranging from Medicine, Mathematics, Literature and Science.
From across the street you see the bold print: A is for . . . Jane Austen aged about 35; B is for . . . Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library; E is for . . . Euclid’s elements of geometry, a standard mathematical textbook for over 2 000 years, Greek text and diagram from one of its oldest surviving manuscripts, AD 888.
F is for . . . First Folio Shakespeare. The First collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays published in 1623 seven years after his death. M is for . . . Magna Carta. One of the four early engrossments of Magna Carta owned by the Bodleian Library. Issued in the name of the boy King Henry III in 1217.
Then comes the broad letter Q which, believe you me, is devoted to the least expected individual in this glamorous array of the world’s “who is who?” Yes, you guessed right! Q is for a Queen: Q is for . . . Queen Lozikeyi. Photograph of the Queen Regent of Matabeleland, c1910.
Executing a defiant, elegant, imposing, royal and majestic poise the Ndebele Queen does not disappoint. The near life-size image of the lanky and gangly queen is sporting a blouse, pleated skirt and some fabric tied around her waist. In her right hand she is holding a broom. From her neck hang horns of buck: probably klipspringer, duiker or springbok. These could have been containers for snuff or protective charms.
For one coming from Zimbabwe and Matabeleland in particular, it was heartening to see our Queen take a pride of place in least expected quarters-Central Oxford, of all places. Besides, she is the only black person in the array of distinguished personalities. Equally heartening was the realisation that I had played a part in showcasing the Queen by jointly penning the book, Lozikeyi Dlodlo: Queen of the Ndebele, a copy of which is lodged with the world-famous Weston Bodleian Library.
