Imvo Zabantsundu, 1884-1955

[Source - Steven Kotze, for FHYA, 2026: Imvo Zabantsundu, the first independent Black newspaper in South Africa, was established in Qonce (King William's Town) in the Eastern Cape in 1884 and ceased publication in 1955. The FHYA selection of IMVO materials currently offers a trial curation of digitised copies of the newspaper from 1884 and 1885 from the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) Digital Collections https://www.crl.edu/ and converted text files produced by the isiXhosa Intellectual Traditions (IsiXIT) Project https://ibali.uct.ac.za/s/isixit/page/welcome that offer edited searchable facsimile versions of the newspaper in the same period. The collection is organised into 'Series' arranged chronologically by year, each containing 'File' levels arranged by month. At the 'Item' level are digital copies of the newspaper sourced from the Centre for Research Libraries (CRL) website, interleaved with converted text files produced by IsiXIT. Negotiations are currently underway with the Cory Library, Makhanda, to digitise its complete microfilm holdings of Imvo Zabantsundu and to place them online in this curation, along with further material from IsiXIT, as well as transcripts produced by researchers working on with the newspaper texts, and further associated materials. Watch this space!]