5. Building democratic archives In South Africa today, the majority of democratic and social justice efforts concerning archives lie outside the government’s archival system. This archival activism has shaped public debate and impacted on perceptions of nationhood and citizenship over the last two decades. A small cluster of archival activists has addressed the challenges of reconciliation, social cohesion, social justice, memory building, and the development of political accountability. These activists resist contraints on our access to information, and fight to release strategic records into the public domain. Further, political developments over the last three years have challenged established archives and archival practices, highlighting ignored and hidden legacies of political damage, and raised demands that records feed into democratic accountability. These are challenges and demands that are especially sharply etched in South Africa, but discernible in many settings across the globe.
A. Archival activism
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In South Africa, two points have emerged: the first is the relative lack of, or knowledge of, any archive(s) of past activism,that serve as resources for newly emergent forms of activism. The second is the new activism’s determination to control its own archive of action. We see this in the way in which those affected by the Marikana Massacre and those involved in #rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall have deliberately set out to generate records of their experiences and actions and to control the way in which these are put to use. We see something similar in the initiatives – foundations, commissioned biographies and auto-biographies – aimed at consolidating the legacies of older activists.
- Excerpted from ‘A Ground of Struggle’
