Memory activists such as Verne Harris are alarmed by the neglect of South Africa’s national archives and record-keeping.
In eerily quiet places, where a whisper sounds like a screech, many of South Africa’s most significant historical records are crammed away. Disturbingly, the state of our country’s public archives is much like the state of the nation: it needs to be mended.
The gates of Parliament stand tall behind the lofty statue of Louis Botha at the end of Roeland Street. Traffic blares and people weave between buildings. Further up the road, at No 72, stands the Western Cape Provincial Archives and Records Service – silent, constant and largely ignored.
Administration is critical for the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa (Narssa), but, like most public institutions in South Africa, poor record-keeping is contributing to its decline.
“You can have [the] majority of the staff black, but that doesn’t change the way the institution is run or operates and how the institution is experienced by the people it’s meant to serve,” says Verne Harris. He is the director of research and archives at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg.
In the apartheid era, records were meticulously kept, detailing the atrocities the National Party inflicted on black people. Important parts of black experience and activism remain in its depths.
In a folder of correspondence to the Union of South Africa’s prime minister in 1910 lies an A5 pamphlet called Rules and Regulations of the African Brotherhood and Commercial Co-operation Society. It details the society’s goals to “thoroughly organise the Dark Races of the country… for Commercial undertakings, educational expansion, and brotherly help among members of the society”.
Without being recorded in the archives, the society might have been erased from South Africa’s history.
What is now Narssa was inherited from the State Archives Service – the apartheid record system. It was meant to become an open, accessible and archival system. Those were the hopes of the 1990s, but for memory activists like Harris, the reality is disappointing.
“We have to understand we didn’t have a revolution, so, in post-apartheid South Africa, we have new elites. How power is exercised, how privilege is protected has not shifted significantly,” he says.
In 2009, a partnership between the University of Cape Town and the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory resulted in the formation of the Archival Platform, which advocates for the respect of public records, archives and memory.
In 2014, it released a damning report after an investigation into the public archives.
“It is alarming that, in the last decade, the institution tasked with ensuring the proper care and management of the records of government has not made this information available as required by its own governing legislation and in the face of the growing concern about government record-keeping,” it said.
It is not unusual for documents to go missing. Victims of apartheid-era forced removals are not included in the land restitution process, because records that link them to their land can’t be found.
Under the Promotion of Access to Information Act (Paia) – which informs much of the Archival Platform’s advocacy – South Africans may access information in the public interest, but the law isn’t always implemented. South Africans have to put in a Paia request if they want access to documents.
The difficulty in getting records is not only a matter of negotiating the Paia process. The system’s catalogue is complex, which Harris says is unavoidable in a filing system of this size and nature.
“It has to do with the extent to which you need to have proficiency in English or Afrikaans. It’s also the cultures of service: the way people are treated, the way they’re made to feel when they enter the space.”
The National Archives of South Africa Act No 43 of 1996 was meant to usher the archive system into a democratic process. But in 2001, the archives Act went under review to amend parts of the administration of the archives that were failing.
In 2008, recommendations to amend the archives Act were made to include digital information in the definition of records and to align it with Paia legislation.
But the amendments were never made; the archives Act in its current format is out of date.
Part of the challenges Narssa faces is the decisions its archivists make on which records to destroy and which to leave intact. Narssa’s appraisal policy helps guide this process, and the National Archives Advisory Council, an oversight body, advises archivists on the final decision.
Harris says another factor setting South African archives back is its reliance on Western modes of archiving knowledge. He says African knowledge systems have largely been excluded from the archives; the current system is colonial in its approach to preserving history. But the threads of black history can be pulled together.
“Ironically, records that were instruments of oppression – like records of magistrates and commissioners – were largely left untouched by the destruction processes. They are very rich sources of information about black experiences. Of course, it’s seen mostly through white eyes,” Harris says.
Mandela’s private archives have been carefully protected to immortalise his legacy. But legacy costs money, and it’s something Narssa is short of.
“The first post-apartheid policy was developed aimed to preserve only 5% of the public record. The reality is that volume and capacity is a huge challenge,” he says. “We’re not a wealthy country and the cost of running these archive repositories is huge.”
The department of arts and culture is reviewing the white paper that focuses on arts, culture and heritage, a document first published in 1997. It critically looks at inequalities in these areas and makes recommendations. The review report is due to be published in early March, according to the department.
Departmental spokesperson Lisa Combrinck says: “The department has appointed a heritage task team that is seized with the transformation of the heritage landscape. The recommendations of this team will also influence transformation processes.”
Black history has been altered or ignored, so preservation is important. But the significance of archives in the battle for justice and memory largely exists on the sidelines of South Africa’s future. Archives are cornerstones of history, heritage and justice, memory activists argue. The fight for their survival is necessary, but public interest is diluted because issues such as housing, service delivery and education take precedence.
In a country short on resources and steeped in inequality, the archives may have to wait.
Harris asks: “If you have to choose between putting money into addressing housing shortages or inadequate sanitation services, where are you going to put those resources?”