Migrated archives

Abstract

In a paper on migrated archives, Nathan Mnjama puts forward several reasons as to why these archives are in the custody of our former colonisers. Infrastructural challenges, the lack of the development of archival services and security issues are some of the reasons highlighted. Consequently, these archives were not collected and preserved within colonies and were thus repatriated to the metropolitan countries for safe storage. The removal of these archives have created gaps in archival holdings and these archives need to be located, retrieved and brought home, so he argues. The author of this response proposes that we need to start afresh and forget about this genre of archives in view of the protracted issues involved and considering the archival service challenges that most archival institutions are facing. We are now talking about de-colonisation/refiguring or Africanisation of our archives because there is over-documentation of the colonial record in our repositories and these records are often biased or incorrect.

Role of the National Archives of South Africa in promoting human rights

“…“They lack skills in legal aspects to identify records due for process.” Skills and knowledge of archives management techniques and procedures have a direct effect on the performance of archives management activities such as acquisition, appraisal and provision of access archives materials (Ngulube and Tafor, 2006, p. 63). The record arrangements by qualified archivists are thus fundamental when it comes to issues of provenance and original order, as this ensures the integrity of the records in question is not compromised (Garaba, 2011, p. 31). Before 1994, in South Africa, the majority of people were not trained in the archive profession.…”

The Materiality of the Archive: Creative Practice in Context

“…The archivist and archival studies scholar Nathan Mnjama has detailed the claims over these records from across eastern and southern Africa (Mnjama 2008(Mnjama , 2015Mnjama and Lowry 2019), and claims from India, Malta and several Caribbean nations have been documented (Auer 1998;Lowry 2020). These claims have been ignored by the British government over the decades since the end of empire.…”

Political power and politics: selecting, creating, and preserving liberation movement archives in South Africa

“…There are limited studies on the liberation movement archives of South Africa, such as Garaba (2011) and Ngoepe and Netshakhuma (2018), which underscore the importance of these archives as historical records, and these did not focus on the role of political powers and politics in the selection and preservation of archives materials. The need to justify selection, and preservation of liberation movement archives histories has been growing.…”

“…Those records retained by the selection process emphasize their significance to the government. Some researchers such as Garaba (2011) claim that the liberation movement's immediate purpose for the creation and preservation of records was administrative convenience and not historical research. A critical reading of the discourse around the selection, creation and preservation of archive materials provides a lens for a critical engagement with the deep-seated and complex issues associated with archives selection and identification.…”

“…The preservation of the history of the liberation struggle is at the top of former liberation movements' agenda who are in government in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region (Garaba, 2011). Strategic political alliances have been established among the Southern African former liberation movements in the SADC region.…”