The University of Fort Hare (UFH) is now the sole and permanent custodian of the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) digitised archival materials.

Former President Nelson Mandela initially had the ANC agree to a partnership with the UFH in 1992 to preserve the party’s history.

On Monday, ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa and UFH Vice-Chancellor Sakhela Buhlungu signed an addendum to the memorandum of understanding to continue preserving ANC material.

The UFH National Heritage and Cultural Studies Center (Nahecs) will digitise the archival material and develop a website to allow the public to access the material for academic research or general information.

“The University of Fort Hare is indeed a national asset, more than that, it is indeed a heritage site,” Ramaphosa said.

UFH was established in 1916 and has become part of the ANC’s history.

“…it became the intellectual home of the oppressed that fed the ANC with much-needed intellectual leaders. What we are doing here, cannot be separated from that history,” Ramaphosa said.

Buhlungu said the partnership between both institutions carried great importance.

“When the ANC decided to approach an institution back in 1992, there were so many universities in the country and they chose this one. They came to UFH because many leaders of the liberation movement came from here at a time they could not access other institutions. It made sense that they chose this University,” he said.

UFH’s Nahecs has preserved artifacts from the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College, which was an educational institution established by exiled ANC members in 1978 in Tanzania.

The Nahecs also has items belonging to political icons Chris Hani and Govan Mbeki, as well as volumes of documents and letters.