Redefining archives in South Africa: Public archives and society in transition, 1990-1996

Archivaria

Volumn 42, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 6-27

  Harris, Verne ^a  

^a National Archives and Records Administration

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EID: 52549123482     PISSN: 03186954     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (98)

1. See, for example, the publicity brochure National Archives of Canada Act (Ottawa, 1992), p. I. One of the mission objectives of the Canadian National Archives is "to preserve the collective memory of the nation and the government of Canada. " Another example is to be found in the State Archives Service's Annual Reports for 1995:. " the State Archives Service is responsible for preserving a national archival heritage. In a sense this heritage is the collective memory of the government and the people, " (Pretoria, 1996), p. I.
2. The concept, derived primarily from the writings of Sir Hilary Jenkinson, had a strong presence in pre-1990 South African archivy, despite the pervasive influence of T.R. Schellenberg.
3. Novelist Milan Kundera explored the relations between power, memory, and forgetting in his The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (London, 1983).
4. Readers of the article in draft form have understood me to imply here that public archivists collaborated in the destruction of oppositional memory.
5. The paper on which this article is based was written in May and June of 1996. 1 prepared this article from it during July 1996.
6. While I have striven for scholarly distance, this remains an insider's account. I have been in the State Archives Service since 1985, as part of senior management since 1993.
7. Such analysis cries out for attention. The only general texts which enter the terrain are: State Archives Service, Handbook (Pretoria, 199 l), chapter 3.
8. Strictly speaking the apartheid era began in 1948, when the National Party assumed power, and ended in 1994 with the country's first democratic general election and the establishment of a Government of National Unity. My analysis excludes the formal transition period of 1990-94, as the State Archives Service underwent significant changes during it. These changes are addressed in the next section of the article. For useful introductory general histories of the apartheid era, see William Beinart, Twentieth-Century South A, frica (Oxford and New York, 1994)
9. Nigel Warden, The Making of Modern South Africa: Conquest, Segregation and Apartheid (Oxford, 1994).
10. The apartheid government allocated a homeland to each of South Africa's major black ethnic "groups. " In terms of separate development policy, black South Africans were to exercise full political rights only in these homelands. The ultimate goal was to establish each homeland as an independent country-by 1994 four of them had taken "inde-endence. "
11. See Verne Harris, "Public-c c e s s i oO fficial Records and the Record Management Function of the South African State Archives Service, " Innovation 4 (1992). p. 15. I I By 1995, eight of the ten homelands had archives services. KwaZulu boasted thirty-four staff members (all appointed after 1990). while the rest combined possessed twenty-nine. Unpublished report by the Arts and Culture Task Group's Archives Sub-committee, "Archives in South Africa, " 1995, pp. 6-7.
12. In 1910 the four British colonies joined to form the Union of South Africa.
13. Excluded from this mandate were the South African Defence Force, the homelands, and so-called "offices of record;" the latter were defined as offices "responsible for documents which require special treatment in order to ensure that the authenticity and legality of the contents cannot be questioned. " State Archives Service, Handbook, p. 15-35.
14. In 1995 the State Archives Service had in its custody 7,292 linear metres of private records, 54% of its total holdings. Verne Harris and Clive Kirkwood, "The State Archives Service and Manuscript Collections: Some Thoughts on Policy and Practice, " Archives News 37, no. 12 (1995). pp. 16-17. The 1962 Act (as amended) charges;he Director of Archives with general responsibilit.
15. Jill Geber, "The South African Government Archives Service, " p. 56.
16. Useful accounts of the "Pretoriastroika" period are given by William Beinart, TwentieA-Century South Africa and Allister Sparks, Tonzorrow is Another Country: Tlze Inside Story of South Africa's Negotiated Revolution (Sandton, 1995).
17. The reasons for revisionist thinking not being forthcoming from the State Archives Service are obvious. The inertia of the broader archival profession is addressed later in this article. Criticism from historians, genealogists, and other users tended to focus on specific problems-the denial of access to records, the destruction of specific categories of record, poor reading room service, etc. I am aware that this assessment might be seen as an endorsement of the powerful myth that before 1990 South African information and heritage practitioners were either passive fellow-travellers or active supporters of the apartheid system. In most disciplines, 1990 was not a watershed, with numerous individuals and organizations having fought courageously against the system for many years. But in archives, oppositional voices were rare before 1990, and in most cases they were severely hamstrung by their positioning within the State Archives Service.
18. There were a few notable exceptions, but in every case except the one addressed in note 37 below, the challenge was muted and narrowly focused.
19. Geber's historical analysis tends to be superficial. It offers no sense of the Service's internal dynamics or coal-face activity. The only Service records consulted by her were annual reports-a notoriously unreliable source of information.
20. It did find a resonance in post-1990 debates, having a considerable influence on the African National Congress' Archives Sub-committee. See, for example, African National Congress, "Preliminary Report of the Archives Sub-committee, " (internal document, 1992). pp. I1 and 14.
21. The most important broadly-focused revisionist pieces include the following: African National Congress, "Preliminary Report".
22. My order of treatment should not be seen as indicative of my assessment of their relative importance. The order is arbitrary.
23. By 1996 another four Afrikaner males had retired from the top eleven positions. The Service's old guard leadership had departed.
24. In 1996 the professional staff component consisted of fifty-six people.
25. It is significant that Marie Olivier, Director of the State Archives Service, was elected ESARBlCA Vice-chair in 1995.
26. The influence of Eric Ketelaar, Terry Cook, and Andor Skotnes was especially significant. See note sixty below.
27. African National Congress, "Preliminary Report, " p. 2.
28. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
29. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
30. Graham Dominy, "Archives in a Democratic South Africa. " This article was awarded the South African Society of Archivists' SASA Prize for 1993.
31. The Culture and Development Conference took place in AprilIMay 1993. No formal document of Conference positions and recommendations emerged. One of the recommendations-that there should be a moratorium on the destruction of all public records-was implemented by the Government of National Unity two years later. This is dealt with elsewhere in the article. (See especially note eightyeight below.) In 1995, the ANC produced a collection of some of the documents presented at the Conference as well as summaries of some of the Conference recommendations. ANC Department of Arts and Culture, Looking Forward, Looking Backwards: Culture and Development Conference, April-May 1993, Johannesburg (Bellville, 1995).
32. SASA was established in 1960. Largely in reaction to its inactivity, the smaller, less State Archives Service-influenced Association of Archivists and Manuscript Librarians (AMLIB) was established in 1978. Most of its members remained members of SASA.
33. For accounts of SASA in transition, see Clive Kirkwood, "The South African Society of Archivists and the Cultural Historian, " Archives News 38, no. 3 (1996)
34. Verne Hams, "Archivists, Archives and Professionalism" South African Historical Journal 32 (1995).
35. By 1994 the eight-member National Committee included five members from outside the State Archives Service, four non-Afrikaans-speakers, three women, two ANC members, and one black person.
36. South African Society of Archivists, Professional Code for South African Archivists (Pretoria, 1993). The Code was also published in South African Archives Journal 35 (1993), pp. 106-109.
37. The four issues between 1992 and 1995 contained contributions by the following writers from outside the country: Eric Ketelaar (Holland), two articles.
38. The Symposium had five international and two South African speakers, and brought together seven heads of national archives. The heads of most homeland archives services also attended. The keynote address was delivered by Eric Ketelaar, General State Archivist of the Netherlands.
39. The Symposium had six international and eleven South African speakers, with the keynote address delivered by Terry Cook of the National Archives of Canada.
40. South African Society of Archivists, "Position Paper. "
41. The submission on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was published in the South African Archives Journal 37 (1995). The others were planned for publication in the 1996 issue.
42. The State Archives Service seldom appeared in newspaper pages before 1990. After 1990 it was frequently in the news, often in the context of controversy.
43. Ketelaar, General State Archivist of the Netherlands, visited in 1992. He subsequently published "Archives of the People" and "Unfolding South African Archives" in the South Africm Archives Journal and "Keuren en Kiezen, " Archives News 35, no. 2 (1992). He received the 1992 SASA Prize for the former. Cook, Director of the National Archives of Canada's Records Disposition Division, visited in 1994. He was awarded the 1994 SASA Prize for the two papers he presented at the "Archives for the People" Symposium. They were adapted for publication as articles in volume 37 (1995) of the South African Archives Journal: "From the Record to its Context: The Theory and Practice of Archival Appraisal since Jenkinson" and "Keeping Our Electronic Memory: Approaches for Securing Computer-generated Records. " He also published "The Canadian Archival Scene, " Archives News 37, no. 11 (1995) and "Living with Your Conscience at the End of the Day: Ethical Issues and the Archivist, " Archives News 37, no. 10 (1995). For a sense of the impact he made in South Africa, see Verne Hams, "One Hell of a Pair: Personal Reflections on the Visit to South Africa by Terry and Sharon Cook, November 1994, " Archives News 37, no. 7 (1995). Skotnes, Assistant Professor of History at the Russell Sage College in New York, also visited in 1994. He subsequently published "People's Archives and Oral History in South Africa: A Traveller's Account, " South African Arcllives Journul 37 (1995).
44. Under the Interim Constitution public archives was a "concurrent power" of central and provincial governments. This implied some form of central supervision over provincial archives services. The final Constitution establishes public archives as an "exclusive power, " which implies that provincial services will not be accountable in any way to a National Archives.
45. For a critique of the ACTAG Report, see Verne Harris, "Getting our ACTAG Together: Musings on the Challenges Facing South African Archivists, with special reference to the Arts and Culture Task Group's (ACTAG) Report on Heritage, " South African Archives Journal 37 (1995).
46. Strictly speaking, the Report should have formed the basis for a Government White Paper on Arts and Culture, which in turn should have informed the drafting of legislation. The Draft White Paper on Arts, Culture, and Heritage was released on 4 June 1996-it simply does not address the question of archives.
47. It had a broader consultative mandate, but focused almost exclusively on the drafting of new archival legislation. For fuller accounts of the Consultative Forum's establishment and work, see Marie Olivier, "Continuity Amid Change, " pp. 8-14: Clive Kirkwood, "Drafting New Archival Legislation for South Africa: A Consultative Process Paves the Way:' Archives News 38, no. 1 (1995).
48. The following bodies were represented on the Forum: the Bureau of Heraldry.
49. The drafting was done by a Working Committee for the Drafting of Archival Legislation elected by the Forum. In studying international archival legislation, the Committee focused on the legislation of Australia, Canada, Malawi, Namibia, and Zimbabwe.
50. At the time of writing (May-July 1996) the Bill was being debated by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee for Arts, Culture and Language, Science, and Technology.
51. The Free State component of the State Archives Service has produced, with the concurrence of the Free State Branch of the South African Society of Archivists, a position paper for the Free State Province modelled closely on the KwaZulu-Natal document. Public archivists in both the Free State and Northern provinces are currently drafting provincial archival legislation.
52. Perhaps the clearest articulation of this view is to be found in Arts and Culture Task Group, Final Report.
53. This view has been most strongly advocated by the State Archives Service, but see also South African Society of Archivists, "Position Paper, " p. 97 and KwaZulu-Natal Project Task Group: Archives Services, Position Paper, p. 6.
54. These are functions related to records still in the custody of government offices and to records systems in use by government offices.
55. Both the draft National Archives of South Africa Bill and the draft Provincial Archives of KwaZulu-Natal Bill giveexpression to this view. It has also been adopted by the drafters of archival legislation in the Free State and Northern provinces.
56. See, for example, State Archives Service, "Report on Current State Archives Service Appraisal Policy. " These voices have been strongly influenced by Terry Cook and other international heralds of a postcustodial era for archives.
57. The apartheid Department of National Education was responsible for formal state involvement in "culture. " The Director of Archives reported to the Department's Chief Director for Culture.
58. The ANC's Archives Sub-committee elaborated on the difficulties created by the State Archives Service's "low bureaucratic status. " "Preliminary Report, " p. 7. The Arts and Culture Task Group proposed "framework autonomy" (without defining the term closely) for public archives in its Final Report, p. 65.
59. SASA has recommended that "South Africa's national archives service should be an independent agency directly answerable to the national legislature and advised by a board or commission representative of all archives users. " SASA, "Position Paper, " p. 97. The KwaZulu-Natal Project Task Group: Archives Services (PTG: AS) recommended that. " the provincial archives service. should be positioned as centrally as possible and with the status required to audit public records management. Independent agency status similar to that of the province's Public Service Commission, is the ideal. " PTG: AS, Position Paper, p. 20.
60. They argue that effective monitoring, controlling, and auditing of government offices requires both relative autonomy within the bureaucracy and significant bureaucratic status.
61. Indeed, there is a danger of what autonomy the State Archives Service currently enjoys being further eroded. The delay in the passage of the National Archives of South Africa Bill through Parliament has been caused primarily by disagreement about the measure of control the Minister is to exercise over the National Archives. There are those who wish to increase significantly the powers afforded the Minister in the Consultative Forum's draft Bill. See also notes eighty-one and ninety below.
62. 1 do not imply that all Jenkinsonians have been converted.
63. One of these mechanisms, arguably the most important, is a statutory body with certain controlling powers over public archives. In transformation discourse there has been unanimous rejection of the present Archives Act's provision for an Archives Commission with an almost purely advisory function and appointed without public participation.
64. Disagreement on this question, specifically on the respective powers and duties of the National Archivist, the Minister, and the National Archives Commission, is the cause of the troubled passage through Parliament of the National Archives of South Africa Bill. See also note seventy-eight above and note ninety below.
65. Such a balance has been advocated by inter cilia the Arts and Culture Task Group, the Consultative Forum on Archival Management and Legislation, and the KwaZulu-Natal Project Task Group: Archives Services.
66. Nevertheless, this view still has powerful advocates. Elsewhere in this paper I have indicated its qualified expression in the Arts and Culture Task Group's Final Rel-oral nd the ANC's Archives Sub-committee's "Preliminary Report. " Powerful voices in the broader terrains of culture and heritage give it unqualified support.
67. I have already elaborated on apartheid South Africa's record, but there are numerous other international examples. See Terry Cook, "From the Record to its Context, " pp. 37, 38, and 44.
68. Albert Grundlingh, "Historical Writing and the State Archives, " p. 83.
69. There is no clear conceptual distinction, of course, between appraisal and collection. Active documenting is an integral part of appraisal, and collection presupposes appraisal decisions. But in South African archival discourse and practice the distinction has been made firmly, with appraisal a function related to public records and collection to private records.
70. Between 1926 and 1953 the Archives Commission was responsible for the appraisal of official records. Thereafter the function was assumed by the State Archives Service, although the Commission retained. the powerto authorize destruction until 1979. The Commission had little credibility-it was not appointed by a democratic government, the appointment process was not democratic, and it was not broadly representative (it was dominated by white, Afrikaans-speaking male academics in the apartheid period). Both before and after 1979 there has been no attempt to make appraisal a more transparent process, for instance by publishing policy documents or individual disposal authorities.
71. The idea of a moratorium was first mooted by the ANC's Commission on Museums, Monuments, and Heraldry in March 1992. The Commission's Archives Sub-committee subsequently called for "a moratorium on the destruction of records relating to the history of the struggle and to the organization of popular movements which may be in the hands of the security services. " "Preliminary Report, " p. 14. At the ANC's Conference on Culture and Development in 1993 it was resolved that "there should be an immediate cessation of the destruction of all State records regardless of existing policy. " (1 quote this from my own conference notes.) The Arts and Culture Task Group (ACTAG) recommended that "a moratorium should be declared on the destruction of records in all security-related departments until the new National Archives Commission has undertaken a review. " ACTAG, Final Report. p. 96. ACTAG's Archives Sub-committee later called for a moratorium on the destruction of "records related to land transactions and of all records by the military, police, National Intelligence, State President's Office and Department of Justice subject to urgent review of disposal authorities. " ACTAG Archives Sub-committee, "Archives in South Africa, " p. 19.
72. The draft Bill provides for the appointment of Commission members through a process of public nomination. Nominees should be "knowledgeable andlor have an interest in archival matters. " The Minister is constrained to take provincial interests into account and to ensure that the Commission "reflects to a reasonable degree the demographic and gender realities of South Africa. "
73. A similar role is envisaged for the KwaZulu-Natal Archives Council in draft provincial legislation prepared by the KwaZulu-Natal Project Task Group: Archives Services. Drafters of archival legislation in the Free State and Northern provinces are pursuing the same course. At the national level, debate around the National Archives of South Africa Bill has seen proposals that the Commission should actually formulate appraisal policy and review individual appraisals. Another proposal is that the Minister should approve individual appraisals. See also notes seventy-eight and eighty-one above.
74. Macro-appraisal first became an issue in South African archival debate during Eric Ketelaar's visit to the country in 1992. His account of the Dutch PIVOT Project was received with scepticism within the State Archives Service. However, subsequently, the writing of Terry Cook on appraisal and the Canadian macro-appraisal approach raised considerable interest. This was the primary consideration behind the State Archives Service's invitation to him to visit the country in 1994. His explosive impact led directly to the Service's establishment of an Appraisal Review Committee which in 1996 recommended the adoption of macro-appraisal.
75. Schellenberg offers two distinct and, arguably, conflicting methodologies for the identification of records with informational values, on the one hand, and those with evidential values on the other.
76. Most general and standing disposal authorities are issued not on records per se but on functionallybased systems of records classification. In certain areas of practice appraisal occurs at the supraorganizational level.
77. State Archives Service, "Report on Current State Archives Service Appraisal Policy. " The Report recommends a phased introduction of macro-appraisal. This development will have to receive the approval of the National Archives Commission.
78. For an account of this concept, see for example J-P. Wallot, "Free Trade in Archival Ideas: The Canadian Perspective on North American Archival Development, " The American Archivist 57, no. 2 (1994), p. 385.
79. The State Archives Service has subordinated the collecting function firmly-in 1995 private records made up 5.4% of the Service's total holdings. See note fourteen above. In contrast, in Canada, where the concept of "total archives" originated, private records make up roughly half of the National Archives' holdings. Verne Harris and Clive Kirkwood, "The State Archives Service and Manuscript Collections, " pp 5-6.
80. With the exception of the National Film, Video, and Sound Archives, whose audio-visual holdings contain a significant quantity of oral testimony, and a single accession in the Central Archives Depot, the State Archives Service's repositories are devoid of oral sources.
81. Graham Dominy, "Archives in a Democratic South Africa, " p. 74.
82. Sandy Rowoldt has proposed that details of oral sources in South Africa should be included in the National Register of Audiovisual Material. Sandy Rowoldt, "Some Thoughts on the Processing of Oral History Recordings for Inclusion in the National Register of Audiovisual Materials (NAROM), " AMLlB Newsletter 56 (1994). The possibility of creating a national register specifically for oral sources is also being considered by the State Archives Service.
83. The lack of consensus on this issue also reflects uncertainty about the functions of the National Living Culture Commission proposed by the Arts and Culture Task Group. Clearly the functions of this Commission and of the National Archives vis-8-vis oral sources will have to be integrated.
84. For exploration of the issues involved see Verne Harris, "Public Access to Official Records, " and Verne Hanis and Christopher Merrett, "Toward a Culture of Transparency. " South Africa's final Constitution recognizes the right of public access to official information-the Open Democracy Bill, which is currently in a pre-Parliamentary debate phase, is designed inter alia to legislate this right.
85. See, for example, Arts and Culture Task Group's Archives Sub-committee, "Archives in South Africa, " paragraph 5.6(ii).
86. This found expression in the State Archives Service embarking on public programming in the period 1990-94, as I mention elsewhere in this article.
87. See Verne Harris, "Community Resource or Scholars' Domain? Archival Public Programming and the User as a Factor in Shaping Archival Theory and Practice, " South African Archives Journal 35 (1993).
88. Luciana Duranti, "Diplomatics: New Uses for an Old Science. (Part IV), " Archivaria 31 (Winter 1990). p. 14.
89. The South African Library listed one hundred such institutions in 1985-Directory of Manuscript Collections in Southern Africa (Cape Town, 1985). Others have been established since then.
90. Worth special mention are the Cory Library (University of Rhodes), the William Cullen Library (University of the Witwatersrand), the South African History Archive, the Mayibuye Centre (University of the Western Cape), the Alan Paton Centre (University of Natal), the Killie Campbell Africana Library (University of Natal), and the ANC Archives (University of Fort Hare).
91. The one outstanding example of successful inter-institutional cooperation is the building of computerized national registers-ver forty collecting institutions participate in the registers. Most of the credit for this must accrue to the State Archives Service. See Clive Kirkwood, "Inter-institutional Co-operation in the Computer Retrieval of Information on Private Archives: the South African National Register of Manuscripts (NAREM), " in Dick Sargeant, ed., The National Register of Archives: An International Perspective. Essuys in Celebration of the Fifrieth Anniversary of NRA (London, 1995).
92. Verne Hams and Clive Kirkwood, "The State Archives Service and Manuscript Collections, " pp. 8-9.
93. Verne Hams and Clive Kirkwood, "The State Archives Service and Manuscript Collections, " pp. 8-9.
94. The draft Provincial Archives of KwaZulu-Natal Bill does the same for a KwaZulu-Natal provincial archives service.
95. The ANC's Culture and Development Conference, for example, recommended that: "The Freedom of Information Act should also refer to private information. For example, multi-national corporations have vast amounts of information of public interest, and mechanisms such as the courts or tribunals must be set up to ensure access if the public interest overrides privacy provisions. " (I quote this from my own Conference notes.)
96. I was privileged to read a draft of Terry Cook's paper "Interaction of Archival Theory and Practice since the Publication of the Dutch Manual in 1898 for the 13th International Congress on Archives (China, September 1996). This outstanding piece of scholarship demonstrates how South African discourse on archives connects with a wider international discourse.
97. J-F, Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis, 1993), pp. 5, 45, and 51.
98. Terry Cook, "From Information to Knowledge: An Intellectual Paradigm for Archives, " Archivaria 19 (Winter 1984-85). p. 49.