/ 31 July 2003

Your right to free information

The South African History Archive (Saha), based at the University of the Witwatersrand, is changing the culture of secrecy in South Africa by engaging in ground-breaking work to help ordinary people access information.

Saha established its freedom of information programme in 2001 and has built up a collection of materials released in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (2000). Since then Saha has successfully helped individuals and organisations submit requests for information or records from both the government and private institutions, says Verne Harris, the archive’s director.

At least 70% of the 150 requests for information Saha has received have come from private individuals. Researchers in particular use the archive to gain access to government information they may not have the expertise or financial resources to access themselves.

One request was submitted to the Department of Foreign Affairs concerning the dismissal of a customs official after he blew the whistle on alleged fraudulent practices in the 1980s.

In 1999 the independent NGO archive, dedicated to documenting and supporting the struggles for justice in South Africa, launched a six-month course, called Reading the Trace: Memory and Archives, in conjunction with Wits.

‘At the heart of the course is activism,” says Sello Hatang, one of the first students to complete the course. He sees archives as living things that should work for all South Africans. ‘Transparency and accountability are essential for a democracy and people must be held accountable for their actions,” he says.

After working for both the national archive and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Hatang, one of only a handful of black archivists in South Africa, was appointed to coordinate the programme.

He says the course is not exclusively academic, nor does it claim to send people out as professional archivists. Students who take it are taught to hone their research and analytical skills, gain insight into archival theory and practise elementary archival and record-keeping skills.

Having completed the course, Hatang feels his job is ‘to help people exercise their rights and see the Promotion of Access to Information Act at play … It makes me so happy at the end of the day that I helped someone practise a constitutional right,” he says.

Hatang says the course would be useful for anyone who is considering a career in archives or record management, and for information analysts, researchers and government officials involved in implementing the Promotion of Access to Information Act.

The six-month postgraduate course is offered at master’s, diploma and honours levels by Wits’s graduate school for the humanities and social sciences in conjunction with the history archive.

Wits also has a two-day course that aims to provide a working knowledge of the legislative provisions for freedom of information in South Africa. The course is aimed at practising archivists, people considering careers in archives and anyone with a strong interest in freedom of information. — Witsnews