2007 marks the tenth anniversary of the National Archives of South Africa Act, which formally inaugurated South Africa’s post–apartheid archival system.
Under apartheid the country’s archives and other memory institutions promoted the narratives, and the values, of apartheid’s beneficiaries. During the 1980s and early 1990s strong counter–currents emerged which ultimately reshaped the South African archival landscape.
This landscape is still defined by many challenges which impact in fundamental ways on society. For instance:
- Systemic barriers to public access have proved resilient, and archives are far from being the people’s resource envisaged for the new national system. Widespread use of electronic technologies for record–keeping poses serious questions for the long-term preservation of electronic memory.
- The question of how records should be selected for preservation (and by whom) remains unresolved.
- Effective auditing of government record–keeping remains an ideal extremely difficult to realise in practice.
- South Africa has a fledgling freedom–of–information regime, with disputes being resolved by expensive (and lengthy) litigation rather than mature (and relatively cheap) administrative process.
- Despite the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), large quantities of apartheid–era state records have still not been located, documented and made accessible.
The archive of the TRC itself has been the subject of fierce contention.
The conference addressed these and many other challenges.