Former apartheid police files on Dumisa Ntsebeza, the former chief investigator of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), are among several that have disappeared from the safekeeping of the South African Police Service (SAPS) since 1998.
The South African History Archive at Witwatersrand University, which put in a request to the SAPS in Durban on behalf of Ntsebeza for two files on surveillance activity on him in 1976 and 1977, said they had been told that the files were missing.
Files related to Operation Vula, an underground intelligence operation set up by the African National Congress during the apartheid years. Also missing are files relating third force activity in the North West.
This year the archive reported that 34 boxes and two folders of documents taken by the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development from the TRC offices in 1999 had disappeared.
The TRC had learned that the security branch had destroyed most support function and operational records. But some records had survived. Back-up tapes of the head office database were also located by the TRC.
The archive’s deputy director Sello Hatang said that Nelson Mandela had imposed a moratorium in 1998 on the destruction of these files, which were to have been transferred to the National Archives.
National archivist Graham Dominy said he was not aware of the cases highlighted by the Wits history archive. He said according to the National Archives Act, government bodies were to appoint record managers to maintain the files in their safekeeping.
Dominy said the National Archive is responsible for approving the record-management systems of government bodies and for authorising the disposal of records, if the records have no permanent value.
He said the bulk of the TRC records had already been transferred to the National Archives but some are still being used operationally and their transfer is still pending.
At the time of going to press, the SAPS was yet to comment on the missing files.