The African National Congress archives committee handed tapes and transcripts of 100 interviews with struggle veterans to the University of Connecticut and the University of Fort Hare on Tuesday.
Among the veterans interviewed are Walter and Albertina Sisulu and Govan Mbeki.
The ruling party has a partnership with the University of Connecticut in the United States that involves assistance to the ANC with technical training and other support, including locating and retrieving ANC material in the US.
In South Africa, the University of Fort Hare has been designated the official repository of the ANC.
Party spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama said the ANC started in 1990 to retrieve and preserve its early records systematically and make them available to the public.
Its archive campaign has seen the return to South Africa of the records of 23 of the 40 offices established during exile from 1960.
”It is estimated that these records comprised between six and eight million documents with some duplication,” said Ngonyama. ”The bulk of these have been sorted, catalogued and are now available to the public at Fort Hare University. They form the core of probably the largest archive of any political organisation anywhere.”
Ngonyama added that the ANC is training archivists through its partnership with the University of Connecticut. One graduate is now the ANC’s oral-history coordinator.
”We hope to complete processing and depositing records of the exile period by December,” he said.
Among the work currently being processed are records from former president Nelson Mandela during his time in office. They will be transferred to Fort Hare once they are ready, said Ngonyama.
”We also have about 7 000 photographs that were received during Mr Mandela’s tenure as president. Most of these are of his many trips abroad meeting with heads of states and foreign dignitaries after his release.”
The ANC is also in the process of receiving the Mary Louis Hooper collection. ”She was a long-time anti-apartheid campaigner in the United States and worked as an assistant to chief Albert Luthuli,” Ngonyama said. — Sapa