On the 26th of
February, we were joined in studio by Mr. Omar Badsha, a self-taught, award
winning artist and photographer. Badsha played an active role in the South
African liberation struggle, as a cultural and political activist and trade
union leader. Among all his great achievements, in 2000, he established South
African History Online (SAHO), a non-profit online history and heritage project
which has become one of Africa’s largest history websites.
Mr. Omar says
being a part of Bush Radio when it started and being part of its legacy is
something he holds dear to his heart and also that it shows the perseverance and
resilience of the station. “With 6.2million visitors on the SAHO site, you constantly
have to update your infrastructure, security and hosting…”, were the words of
the ex-political figure, where his vision is to contribute to the change in SA,
promote new history and contribute to knowledge production.
Ensuring that the
apartheid bias was addressed, when rewriting the history from the side of
people who were in the struggle is being preserved by Mr. Omar and SAHO, he
intends to include all races in collecting history stories from all walks of
life that falls part of South African history.
Also, when asked
how the media has changed over the years, Mr. Omar said, “it’s changed
tremendously, you can’t even begin to explain to young people that when you
wanted to communicate with other people there was censorship. Today, in the new
South Africa, we are very lucky that our Constitution and institutions allow us
freedom of expression.” Mr. Omar explains that last year, when their site was
down for a few days, they were actually hacked! To put the cherry on top, this wasn’t
the first time that this has happened. With the website being shutdown, the SAHO
team were lucky to have backed up their entire archive, and within a week they
recovered everything.
Mr. Omar and SAHO
will be hosting a fundraiser for their website, while also having a campaign where
they are asking people if they could donate r10 a month, to contribute to the
site and keep it running while also not being dependent on big foundations,
corporations, government and advertising for money.
In his last words
before closing the interview, he said that young people must exercise their
vote, but voting isn’t enough, one should continue to build grassroot
organizations and keep local authority of those organizations accountable for
what happens and doesn’t happen in our society.
To get in contact
with Mr Omar or with South African History Online:
Tel: +27 (0)21
447 4365 or +27 (0)21 447 3434 (alternative)
Office hours:
8h00 - 16h00
Physical Address:
349 Albert Road, Woodstock 7925, Cape Town, South Africa
Email: General queries, info@sahistory.org.za
To listen to the
interview, click on the link below:
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