New leaf: The public has access to one floor of the Johannesburg City Library, which has been closed since the pandemic.
The Johannesburg City Library is set to reopen on Friday after it was shut in 2020 during the pandemic and remained closed afterwards for overdue repairs to structural damage that made it unsafe.
This is the first step in the phased reopening of the library and will give the public access to the first floor of the three-storey heritage site, which houses more than 1.5 million books, including newspaper archives and special collections.
There is no confirmation of when the library will be fully operational.
During a site visit in August, city officials said the building needed the leaking roof and drainage system repaired and the installation of a fire system to ensure compliance with regulations.
The city declined to comment but posts on the Johannesburg Development Agency’s Facebook page said the city had installed fire doors, a gas suppression system to safeguard the library’s collections by “swiftly extinguishing fires without causing water damage” and water supply tanks outside.
The Johannesburg Heritage Foundation, the Johannesburg Crisis Alliance and other civic organisations have been lobbying for the reopening of the library, saying its closure was a major loss to the public.
“We’re very happy to see the library being reopened, and we look forward to the speedy and full reopening, so the library can get back to where it was before the closure,” the foundation’s chairperson David Fleminger told the Mail & Guardian this week.
“It’s been a long time coming. We’ve been at pains to stress that the closure of the library has had very real consequences and a negative impact on the local community and research academics, students, scholars and so on.”
“We do have concerns about why it took so long to get the library open in the first place and call on the city, in the interest of transparency, to make public the expenses and breakdown of the work done, so we know what was done and what needs to be accounted for.”
In August, the city said it would cost R54 million to repair all the damage, on top of the R22 million for repairs completed in July.
Fleminger urged the city to urgently reopen other libraries across Joburg, including the Louisa Prince Library in Ennerdale, the Protea North Library in Soweto, the Southdale Library in Robertsham, the Brixton Library and the Murray Park Library in Jeppestown.
“Each one of these facilities plays a very important role as a ‘third place’ (i.e. not a home or workplace) that can foster a sense of community and learning, promote social interaction, and contribute to a more vibrant and engaged citizenry,” he said.
