Archives at the Crossroads 2007 - Nelson Mandela Foundation

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While political will is clearly a significant factor here, the pending SAHRC reportmakes it clear that one reason for the lack of access to the archive is inadequatetraining, notably around the requirements of PAIA, and a poor culture of recordsmanagement in the departments concerned. As identified above, at root hereis a larger political failure to inculcate at the heart of government an appreciationof the role of records and archiving in maintaining a healthy democracy.Valorised Heritage and Neglected ArchiveThe Conference noted that heritage occupies a central place in the broad Artsand Culture framework in which archives is also situated. In part their respectiveconcerns overlap. Insofar as heritage policies ensure a recognition of intangibleheritage they enable a much-needed widening of the brief of archives. In practicehowever this has had a limited effect in archives, being confined primarily to anaugmentation of the written archive to include oral histories. For the most part,heritage discourse and practice and those of archives remain separate. This isbecause heritage is commonly regarded as the public face or point of presentationof past inheritances, while archive is regarded as the safe storehouse.A great deal has been written about heritage as the site where governments,especially those of new nations, claim a particular past to underwrite the emergingnational identity. We see this in South Africa in certain well-resourced flagshipheritage projects with high impact which promote a particular understandingof the South African past. Some of these projects, like the Robben Island Museumand Freedom Park, have archival components. Government has a clear rationaleand motivation for promoting these projects. They validate and preserve thememory of the freedom struggle. This plays an important role in helping SouthAfricans who were involved in the freedom struggle memorialize and value theirpasts. And, as many commentators have noted, the heritage and tourism agendasintersect in these projects. However, the matter of the archive is not coterminouswith the promotion of heritage.The Conference was concerned to draw government’s attention to the urgentneed to facilitate communities’ and individual citizens’ access to the archive fortheir own many and diverse projects of identity, to enable them to engage thepast, to promote ideas about the past and to contend others. Such access tothe archive is further crucial to the project of imagining their futures in SouthAfrica as well as to holding government accountable. We are all deeply awarethat there is no one definitive version of the past that holds good for all peopleat all times. To admit and facilitate a diversity of interpretations of the past is aprogressive challenge to politically dangerous exclusivisms. Open and viable8 |“National System, Public Interest” Open Report
archives are vital in anchoring citizenship and that in turn lies at the heart ofsocial cohesion.The Conference discussed the existence of a range of community-based initiativeswhich interrogate those archives that are available to them and use them asways of achieving understandings of the past and of imagining the future thatare not necessarily those that are envisaged in the formal heritage projects ofthe state. Nonetheless these local projects do important work in assisting thosecommunities to negotiate their identities within contemporary South Africa,allow the communities concerned to valorize those identities and where necessaryenable reconciliation over past injustices. In a number of best practice examplesthey result in archivally-based contemporary cultural initiatives with developmentaland employment possibilities. (The Living Landscape project involving theClanwilliam community provides a case in point.) Such initiatives illustrate vividlythe difference between archive and heritage, most notably in archive as an opensource for diverse explorations of the past, and heritage as a form of presentationof the past already organized into a story. As such the differences provide pointersfor national archival policy.Isolation of ArchiveThe Conference noted that the archive is currently understood in a limited wayas comprising the isolated institutions of the archival system. This definition ofthe archive is a colonial and apartheid inheritance that needs to be revised. Thecollections of material culture in museums, for example, are crucial archivalsources for the history of South Africa. Archival policies and projects need toinclude these holdings.The inherited definition further fails to acknowledge the presence of archive incountless aspects of cultural and social life: in neighbourhood jazz clubs, marriageand funeral rites, family photo albums, artworks, plays, novels and designerclothing, to name but a few of the many sites. These sites contain valuablearchival resources and significant archival energies flourish in them that meritrecognition within cultural policy. Indeed, archive needs to be recognized asfoundational to much of the work of the Department of Arts and Culture.The prevailing concept of archive is weighed down by its colonial and apartheidbaggage. The fact that the bulk of the documents comprising this archive relateto those regimes contributes further to its isolation. Two important points needto be registered here.Archives at the Crossroads | 9
Page 1: Archives at theCrossroads 2007Open
Page 5 and 6: ContentsSummary ...................
Page 7 and 8: SummaryThe triggers that led to the
Page 9 and 10: “The archive” is a conceptual t
Page 11 and 12: Electronic records management in bo
Page 13: Yasmin Sooka, Foundation for Human
Page 17 and 18: Lack of resources: The Conference d
Page 19 and 20: ConclusionWhile the current situati
Page 21 and 22: Justice Albie Sachs| 15
Page 23: | 17
Page 26 and 27: Tuesday, 24 April 200709h00 - 09h30
Page 28 and 29: Institution Last Name First Name Co
Page 34 and 35: Appendix 4: Regional Archival Platf
Page 36 and 37: The interaction is aimed at improvi
Page 38: AcknowledgementsConference Organisi

Archives at the Crossroads 2007 - Nelson Mandela Foundation

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