Zenzo C. Nkobi | Photo Works

8/4/2008: Action taking by SAHA – Judy Seidman without permission by Nkobi Heritage

editor — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:36:23 +0000

Digitising the photographic archive of Zenzo Nkobi

Ms Judy Seidman, South African History Archive
2008 award – major project
£8,315 for 6 months

This project will digitise and conserve over 5,000 photographs taken by Zenzo Nkobi, a South African who went into exile during the 1960s and who worked as a professional photographer in the 70s and 80s in Southern Africa. Nkobi recorded the Southern Africa liberation struggle camps, leaders, conferences, the massacres of the 1970s, the impact of South African military destabilisation and the Gukurahundi (the 1980s post-independence repression in western Zimbabwe).

This is perhaps the only intact photographic collection recording the Southern African liberation movements in exile. From the early 1970s to the early 1990s, Nkobi recorded the Southern Africa liberation struggle. To ensure security, photographers were not permitted in residences and camps unless fully vetted by the movement; Zenzo Nkobi, as the son of ANC treasurer-general Thomas Nkobi, had complete access. His images cover ANC and Zimbabwean refugee and military camps in Zambia and Botswana in the 1970s. His photographs show ZIPRA military training camps and the only known images of the Freedom Camp massacre and other destabilisation raids on Zambian soil by Rhodesian and South African troops.

Zenzo Nkobi photographed liberation movement leaders at major regional and international conferences, as well as people’s daily lives in exile, in Lusaka and Maputo. Zenzo was a member of the ANC photography unit in the 1980s; however, the unit’s stored images were destroyed by water damage in Zambia in the late 1980s.

In 1980, he photographed the return of exiles and elections in the newly liberated Zimbabwe, and rare images of the Gukhurahundi (repression of the population around Bulawayo in the early 1980s).

Initial research will place these photographs into context, through preliminary interviews with people present at the events recorded. This will ensure the initial indexing and filing of the images, providing the foundations for future in depth research, which is beyond the scope of this immediate project.

The photographic negatives were given by the Nkobi family to the South African History Archives, unsorted and unreferenced in plastic sleeves within looseleaf folders, in cardboard boxes. The negatives need to be placed in a secure conservation environment as soon as possible, to prevent further deterioration.

As the collection is unique, it is believed essential to have multiple digital copies made accessible for research and record purposes in key archival repositories. Without this, an important and irreplaceable visual record may be lost. The project will provide digital copies to local and international historical repositories; and conserve the original negatives in a proper archival environment.

http://www.bl.uk/about/policies/endangeredarch/2008/seidman.html

11-6-2007: Denis Goldberg: “a personal matter

editor — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 20:53:13 +0000

———————————–
Gesendet: Montag, 26. November 2007 14:22
Von: James Yeowart [mailto:james@yeowart.co.za]
Gesendet: Montag, 26. November 2007 15:39
An: Frank
Betreff: Re: ESTATE LATE E R M H NKOBI-GOLDBERG

Dear Herr Frank,

I think that it is essential to separate “Estate” matters from “personal” matters that have arisen in the past and I am giving my attention to the points you have raised. However,

it is difficult to understand exactly what your Clients require insofar as the estate of their late Father is concerned. Prof Goldberg never figured into the estate of the Late Zenso C Nkobi and never has had any rights to any property, real or imagined, in that estate. Moreover, your Clients are perfectly aware that the photographic collection of the late Mr Nkobi has gone to The S A History Archives on terms that still have to be negotiated between your two Clients, their cousin and the Archives. Prof Goldberg is not involved with the collection, is not interested in the collection and has no locus standi to involve himself in arriving at any negotiated terms with the Archives. It is up to your Clients to follow up their interest in the photographic collection directly with the body that is now in possession of the material.

Regards,

R F J Yeowart.

—————————————————-
An: ‘James Yeowart’
Betreff: AW: ESTATE LATE E R M H NKOBI-GOLDBERG

Dear Mr. Yeowart,

I understand that your client does not claim to have any rights with respect to the photo archive. As it is so, he shouldn’t mind to acknowledge this in writing.
The mutual release is in the best interest of both sides. Otherwise new conflicts may arise in the future.
Regards

8/10/2007: Reply to Mr. Pigou (SAHA) regarding ownership of the Nkobi Archive

editor — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:34:33 +0000

Dear Mr. Pigou,

Firstly let me apologize for the delay in answering your email. Thank you for informing us that you are now in possession of the photographs and documents. How appropriate that Zenzo’s body of work would end up in an activist archive. We did a little research about SAHA and liked what we discovered. Zenzo created some incredible images both it their historical reporting context and in their artistic power. It is great that the photos still had the power to move and transport you back to exile in the 70s and 80s.

Your website for “Traces of Truth” is a wonderful tool not only for its breath and depth but because at every step of the interaction with the material, the researcher/viewer is always clear what your copyright/intellectual property positions are. You relationship with University of the Witwatersrand is also reassuring because that would further ensuring that this work will continue to be a living legacy through potential institutional support and as a source of cutting edge scholarship surrounding the work.

Your understanding of our concerns is correct. When we originally discovered that Zenzo’s photographs were headed to SAHA, we did not know what the full extent of this transfer would be. Your email was appreciated because it answered several questions we had and put it put several things in the right context.

The three of us are the only copyright holders to Zenzo’s work. Our main concern was that the photographs were about to be used commercially and without an agreement with us. As you stated in your email, we are very open to making the photographs available for non-commercial and educational use, with the relevant copyright citations and acknowledgments of international copyright and property regulations.

As I understand it you have received the following items from Denis Goldberg:

several thousand photo negatives (black&white and in color) in approx. 4-5 folders containing the complete photo works of Zenzo Nkobi covering the period 1978-1993, stored in numbered pocket sheets
approx. 2.500 digital scans of the above collection stored on computer disc(s) or on storage media such as DVD, CD-ROM, USB devices, as digitized by Tina Nkobi and Mr. Eberhard Neugeborn of Bonn / Germany
contextual documentation / cataloging information in MS Word / MS Excel format in German language
journalistic publications and documentations of Zenzo Nkobi (e.g. “Zimbabwe in Struggle” published 1978 in the former GDR / East Germany).

(Not in scope of the planed agreement are any press writings, articles, photos, etc. authored by my mother Edelgard Nkobi – Goldberg; these are subject at the sole discretion of Denis Goldberg and have been granted in her name to the SAHA as well as to UNISA by Denis Goldberg – which we think is already the case).

We, of course, would like to support your in every possible way to make the photo collections of Zenzo Nkobi fully available to researchers and clients of the SAHA and enable educational and academic usage of the information material.

A few points to explore a priori would be:

details on your intended usage of the photo material
geographical scope of your license requirement
access right of us owners to the original material, specifically the negatives
privacy concern, i.e. removal of private photo items from the collection prior to hosting them publicly
feasibility of the project given the existing backlog, the storage room situation and budget and staff constrains of the SAHA
existing budget calculations regarding the collections, approval of budget by SAHA management committee
insurance regulations in regard to loss, theft or damage of the material
cataloging and documentation of the images

As you stated, this effort to preserve and take care of the photographs should sustain itself financially. Apparently a minor amount was already required to reimburse transportation and hardware cost to Denis Goldberg. How much will it cost initially to further digitize the photos? How much will the projected maintenance costs be over the next couple of decades? In addition to the costs typically associated with restoring negatives, creating high resolution scans, insurance, cataloging, administration, internet publishing maintenance and printing, we know that there might be other cost involved in this effort.

The other question we have it what fundraising ideas do you have and what has worked for you in the past? Knowing this and how much it will all cost will help us in terms of our input in with the fundraising effort and what we can do individually and collectively in terms of fundraising. The idea of a collective commons trust is a very interesting one that we would like more information about. We know that you are still in the formative stages around this issue. We would be interested to know what ideas come out of your discussions regarding this. We would also love to hear more about your outreach products.

The other important issue you brought up in your email was the one about cataloging. Judy Seidman’s credentials speak for themselves. Here is another place were we can contribute to this process because Tina has information about many of the photographs. You probably already have a lot of this information but every bit of meta-data and photo descriptions can help in this effort.

Thank you for offering each of us a copy of Red on Black: the History of the South African Poster Movement. We would love to take a look at your work. You can send copies to:

….

Again, thank your for your email. This is ultimately about preserving, protecting and presenting Zenzo Nkobi’s amazing body of work. We come to these discussions in good faith and look forward to working with you.

Please contact us with your thoughts when you get a chance.

Best regards

2007 Black Media Forum

editor — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:17:19 +0000

2001 Berlin

editor — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:31:59 +0000

2001 Exhibition in Berlin

9/14/2007: Email received by Piers Pigou, director of the South African History Archive (SAHA)

editor — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 20:30:37 +0000

My name is Piers Pigou, the director of the South African History Archive (SAHA) a small independent archive based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. (www.saha.org.za)

As I hope you are aware, SAHA was approached by Mr Denis Goldberg in connection with the transfer of your father, Mr Zenzo Nkobi’s photographic archive / negatives. Mr Goldberg has sent us a copy of correspondence from your lawyers which I understand when roughly translated says; “On considering Mr Goldberg’s intention to transfer [the photo archive of Zenzo Nkobi] to the South African History Archive, my clients have no objection in principle to the non-commercial use thereof, provided that the intellectual property rights of my clients are acknowledged. A licencing agreement must be entered into with the holders of those rights, including my clients.”

We had expected that an agreement would be reached between yourselves and Mr Goldberg before the archive was transferred to Pretoria. I should point out, however, that Mr Goldberg has now couriered the collection which arrived a week or so ago and is safely stored in our ‘sorting room’. I understand he is keen for us to engage in a bilateral over the necessary arrangements vis-à-vis the materials. This letter, therefore serves as an opening engagement to get that ball rolling.

May I start by saying how delighted SAHA is to have the opportunity to act as custodian to this important and unique collection and I want to assure you that we are happy to agree to the conditionalities set out above. SAHA is a non profit entity that relies on donor funding for programmatic and operational activities. We are a somewhat unusual archive – an activist archive – established in the late 1980s to collect and document struggles for justice in the fight against apartheid, and since the mid 1990s, also struggles for justice in the making of democracy. Whilst we provide services to academics, researchers and other professionals we are also dedicated to taking the archive out beyond such ‘traditional’ users and seek to engage a number of communities and constituencies who would not ordinarily have such access. In this regard, SAHA is increasingly trying to get the archive utilised in a range of outreach products that can make struggle related materials accessible to a broader range of South Africans.

In terms of the longer term sustainability / protection of the collections, we have a standing agreement with the University of the Witwatersrand that should SAHA not survive financially our archival holdings will be curated by the University. SAHA’s archive (detail of our collections can be found on the website). Please also have alook at our joint TRC website (with the University), entitled ‘Traces of Truth’ – http://truth.wwl.wits.ac.za – that we are raising funds for round 2 at the moment.

We have started to look for monies to ensure processing (high resolution scanning) and preservation of the negatives (in appropriate folders etc which will be kept in appropriate archival conditions), and we hope the printing of a good selection of these remarkable images. We would then look at issues of arrangement and description, as well as dissemination and possible utilisation (which we very much like your guidance / input on). We have a wonderful person, Judy Seidman, who was involved in the ANC’s poster collective MEDU, based in Botswana during the 80s. She is the curator of our poster collection who is very keen to take a direct role in overseeing this project. She is also well placed to help develop the meta-data, in terms of developing / investigating further descriptions of the detail on many of the images (who is present etc)

SAHA appreciates your concerns about non commercial use of your father’s images, and it is a principle we follow, especially in terms of ensuring that archive is made as widely available as possible. We are, however, finding an increasing number of requests for use of images in the archive (especially relating to posters – SAHA has a unique collection of about 5000 struggle posters) by commercial entities. As such, we are currently exploring options for the creation of a collective commons trust that would enable any monies earned from the utilisation of images to be given back to the artists involved / and back into projects designed to promote the dissemination and accessibility of the archive. Our thoughts remain somewhat formative, so would certainly appreciate any suggestions you may have in this regard, both in terms of your father’s archive, but also more generically. We increasing live in an envoronemtn where we have to prove a certain amount of self-sufficiency, and as you can imagine, securing support for archival work is not always easy!

SAHA would like to send you a copy of it new publications ‘Red on Black: the History of the South African Poster Movement’ – please let me have a postal address so we can pop this in the post to you. On a more personal note, I wanted to say how evocative I found a number of the images I have seen from the collection. Having grown up in Zambia during the 1970s and 1980s, I found myself transported back to that time.

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions and queries. I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours truly,

PIERS PIGOU

(Director – South African History Archive)
Tel: +27 11 837 6683
Mobile: +27 83 381 7150
Fax: +27 11 837 1964

9/14/2007: Denis Goldberg claiming he has inheriteted Zenzo Nkobi’s workings

editor — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 21:07:20 +0000

On 9/14/07, Piers Pigou wrote:

Dear …. Nkobi
……….

[deleted]

This e mail incidentally contained the follow-up of an email conversation Mr Pigou had with Denis Golberg on the issue of ownership of the photo archive.

From: Denis Goldberg [mailto:dengoldberg@mweb.co.za]
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2007 2:22 PM
To: Piers Pigou
Subject: Zenzo Nkobi photographic archive

Dear Piers

In reply to what you wrote [see below]

Thanks for your willingness to take on the Zenzo Nkobi photographic archive.

Your provisional outline of what might be done with the material fits the ideas my late wife, the widow of Zenso Nkobi, and I had arrived at. The point is for the material to become available to those who wish to use it primarily for historical research.

I shall be away for a couple of weeks and from last third of April I shall start preparing the material to get it sent up to you. I shall send digital records separately from the originals. I shall then be away again for virtually the whole of June.

I shall give you a letter stating that Edelgard Nobi inherited the materials from her late husband Zenso Nkobi. That she preserved the materials and arranged to have it digitised. She married me in 2002 and died in 2007, leaving her entire estate to me. I shall pass the rights to the collection to SAHA as part of its collection of historical materials.
regards
Denis

Reply to Denis Goldberg, 9/19/2007

editor — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 20:29:33 +0000

Hello:

I would first of all like to extend my condolences to you over the passing away of Edelgard. My mother and Thuto kept me updated about her condition as it was progressing. She will be missed. I would also like to apologize for not getting back to you sooner. I have been trying to make sense of what was going on regarding Zenzo’s photos in addition to just dealing with my professional deadlines on this end.

The first two questions that come up for me regarding Zenzo’s photos are:

i) do we want to archive Zenzo’s photos?

ii) how will that archiving be done if it is pursued?

On the first matter, I applaud Edelgard’s foresight around preserving Zenzo’s photo. I totally agree that Zeno’s photos should be archived. He created an incredible body of work and I feel that his photos are irreplaceable.

To answer your email about ownership of intellectual property, Tina was right. Zenzo’s will, as I understand it, stated that the four of us owned all his possessions including this photographs.

If I am correct in assuming that everyone in this conversation believes that the photos should be archived, the next question is how to do that. It sounds like you have been working on this project for a while. I had no idea that anything was happening with Zenzo’s photos until July this year so I am playing catch-up. The next action now should probably be …talking this out and decided what we are going to do. I received the email from Piers Pigou. The timing was perfect. I am going to look at the links before I talk to ….

I am interested to know what the archiving costs are so far and what are the projected total costs. My other question is what agreements or contracts, if any, have been made and/or signed with SAHA so far.

I am CCing … this email.

I hope this email makes sense. Feel free to contact me to respond to anything I have written or to get clarity about something I have written.

Take care,

ndlela

Aug 17, 2007, Denis Goldberg wrote:

editor — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 20:25:51 +0000

Dear Ndlela,

I am sure that you know that I was married to Edelgard, your auntie who was married to your brother Zenzo. You are also aware that Edelgard died in December 2006 after a long battle with cancer. Among the things she had brought with her was Zenzo’s photographic archive that Edelgard protected through thick and thin, for many years and in a number of countries. Before she died Edelgard and I worked out that the best thing to do was to scan the negatives and try to get an archive to accept them. There are thousands of images and there is a need to identify the people in the them and the date and place where they were taken. We had made a start with this with equipment I had bought. Unfortunately Edelgard became too ill for us to get very far.

In the meantime we had got the South African History Archive (SAHA) which is based at the University of the Witwatersrand to agree to take the archive, our scanned material and they will provide the resources to make the images usable as an historical resource available for researchers to access.

Since Edelgard’s death, your cousins, J.and T., have through their lawyer in Germany laid claim to Zenzo’s intellectual property rights over his archive, together with your rights. They say that Zenzo left the archive to Edelgard, the daughters and you. Edelgard transferred her rights to Tina. I do not know if this is so or not.

My interest has always been that the archive should become available for access by researchers and I have devoted energy and finances to achieving this goal. J. and T. have said that they accept that SAHA should hold the archive and may make use of it for non-commercial purposes provided that their and your rights to the intellectual property are acknowledged. Since I worked out the proposal with Edelgard to honour Zenzo’s work as a photographer of “the struggle” I fully accept that without reservation.

I hope that you too will accept this idea so that the images will become available and be a contribution to history and so honour Zenzo NKOBI.

Please let me know what you think about this.

It will also be necessary for SAHA to make official contact with you about all this as they will have to make a large financial investment in the project and will want to know that they have the legal right to work with the images. Therefore at some point you will need to give us a physical address where they can contact you to get documents signed and witnessed. They will also make contact with your two cousins for the same reasons.

There is some urgency about this because now that my beloved Edelgard has died I no longer want the responsibility that I shared with her to preserve Zenzo’s life’s work and I need to move the materials to the SA History Archive for safe keeping, and they need to be able to work on the project.

I await your reply.

Your sister Thuto gave me your email address and I hope this finds you well.

Warm regards

Denis Goldberg