The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

In an obvious sense, these studies were documentary histories in that they consisted of
collections of political documents. These had been edited, chronologically arranged and
grouped thematically, and were often annotated. In order to serve a more scholarly
purpose, academic essays accompanied the documents. These sought to establish the
value of the respective sequences of documents, to create a chronology and
periodisation, and to construct a narrative history based on the documents. The
consequence was that these texts had an archival sanctity, while they were also given a
scholarly character.
This was particularly the case with From Protest To Challenge or rather, Karis and Carter,
as the series became known. This project sought “to rescue from obscurity the voices of
protest in South Africa”. It had its origins in a visit to South Africa in 1961‐1962
undertaken by Peter Duignan, a curator of African materials at the Hoover Institution on
War, Revolution and Peace, which was a centre for research on American and
international affairs in the twentieth century based at Stanford University. During his
visit, Duignan established a network of suppliers and collectors in order to obtain
materials. The most important of these contacts was Benjamin Pogrund of the Rand Daily
Mail, who microfilmed papers, files and archives of individuals and groups who had
engaged in opposition to the South African state. At the same time, Duignan secretly
purchased ephemeral political materials and copies of opposition newspapers. Most of
the materials collected came to be housed at the Hoover Institution, while some found
their way to the Chicago‐based Centre for Research Libraries. 17
At the suggestion of Peter Duignan, Thomas Karis undertook to co‐ordinate the
publication of a documentary history of black political opposition in South Africa, based
on all the material collected. Karis had already worked on a related project for the
Town: Buchu Books, Mayibuye Books, UCT Press, 1996; Volume Two: 1943‐1964, Cape Town: Buchu
Books, Mayibuye Books, UCT Press, 1997.
17 Peter Duignan, ‘Preface to the 1987 Printing’, in Thomas Karis and Gwendolen M Carter (eds),
From Protest To Challenge, Volume 2.
116