Much has been written about the struggles for liberation in southern Africa that took place between the 1960s and early 1990s in countries such as Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. This period of history has been transcribed, interpreted and written about in books, academic monographs and colonial treatises. But the sounds and voices these wars and conflicts produced have largely remained muted. As a result, African liberation figures and histories often become one-dimensional and flattened.

Now, a new podcast series, Echoes of Southern African liberation struggles, brings to the fore sound and audio archives of Swiss journalism that are mainly deposited at the Basler Afrika Bibliographien archives in Basel and the Radio Télévision Suisse Archives in Geneva. Led by Swiss historian Melanie Boehi, the fresh and experimental project also includes new interviews, writings and a graphic score, a collaborative form of representation of music which uses visual symbols instead of notes and emerged in the 1950s with liberation and freedom as its central themes. The project brings direct attention to an existing but under-researched depository of recorded “sounds, interviews, music, noises” and other acoustic signals from southern Africa’s past.

The work resonates with me as a scholar of southern African intellectual histories and literary archives, because it highlights a unique and relevant archive that has been hidden from general view. It demonstrates how podcasting can contribute to the decolonisation of research materials and archives that have been historically subjugated, subordinated, silenced or submerged, thereby democratising knowledge and increasing the odds that new audiences will encounter such content. 

Virtual restitution 

It is often said that journalism is the first draft of history. These Swiss journalism archives are not just confined to prominent political figures or big historical moments. They largely feature the voices of common men and women. African history is generally told from the point of view of the powerful, neglecting these voices. The Ruth Weiss Collection, in particular, features women’s voices that we don’t usually hear in historical records. These are women talking about living and loving in times of war.

But how did these archives end up in Switzerland? The liberation movements from countries like Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe were led by scattered organisations that operated in many places at once, to defy bans in their own countries. As a result, they generated dispersed archives.

A lot of materials were lost or destroyed because of the conflict, and those that survived are mostly held in private hands or public entities in Europe and North America. Generations of young Africans have no access to these primary materials that relate to their history. Which is why, in recent years, there has been an urgent demand for restitution—the return of art, archives and objects that were taken during the colonial period. 

For a new generation of Africans, to physically access these Swiss journalism archives, they must overcome issues like prohibitive visa regimes, high travel costs, language barriers and institutional gatekeeping. 

So, Echoes of Southern African liberation struggles is performing virtual restitution by projecting the echoes of history back to their source countries through the new age broadcast technology of podcasting.

The personal and the political 

Sound archives invite collective listening. In this case, Boehi invites a small group to sample the archives to fuse the present and the past. The group is comprised of six contemporary southern African cultural figures with backgrounds in journalism, poetry, music and art: Lynsey Chutel, Talya Lubinsky, Cara Stacey, Niren Tolsi, Belinda Zhawi and Percy Zvomuya. Sound artiste Andrei van Wyk produces the series.

Boehi invites her collaborators to sample from the historical archive and produce “mixtapes”. She also interviews them in turn about their lives and their work. Here, the personal and the political meet and collide. 

The mixtapes use archival audio alongside contemporary reflections from the participants, reminding us that listening is an act of engaging the world. The result is a kind of time travel that oscillates between historical moments and the present. Boehi invites her collaborators to centre their own language, story and lived experience. The series both reclaims histories and gives voice to alternative ways of knowing and being.

Through conversations about history and politics, listeners are asked to consider the new modes of historical research we can imagine. In ‘The long now (1924-2124)’, for example, artist Talya Lubinsky explores her Jewish heritage through her grandparents, who fled Nazi Germany and settled in South Africa, where she was born. But she also anticipates what life would be like in another, future century of violence. Her mixtape references past political protests as well as recent protests in support of Palestine in Berlin. History is an ongoing struggle.

African writer Percy Zvomuya, in ‘Africans liberate Zimbabwe’, revisits the country’s birth in 1980. He builds a mixtape that creates curiosity by focusing on Jamaican reggae star Bob Marley’s famous independence concert in Harare and contemporary interviews with those who were there. 

Voices from the past and present are mixed with a variety of other sounds. Tanya Clement, a digital humanities scholar from the US, argues that history making is a messy, socio-technical process, and our understanding of culture can only be made better when we listen more closely to the noise.

Listening back to the past is essential. Democracy and society are strengthened by scrutiny of the archival record, holding institutions and individuals to account. And unlike radio, which remains popular in Africa and usually under government control, podcasts are a new alternative form of media that bring a greater diversity of voices and perspectives to listeners. This project shows how effectively that can be done.

This piece was originally published on The Conversation. The author, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, is a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford.