The Center for Information and Applied Communication (CAIC), part of the Department of Information Sciences at the University of South Africa, invited Verne Harris (Director of Research and Archive at the Nelson Mandela Foundation) as the speaker for its third Annual Lecture on 6 November 2014.
The meeting saw an audience ranging from staff in national and provincial government departments, staff from local authorities, current and former staff of UNISA, representatives from the Archival Platform, as well as students from the Department of Information Sciences at UNISA.
Also in attendance were the former National Archivist, Dr Graham Dominy, former Foundation staffer Shadrack Katuu, as well as staff from both the National Archives and several Provincial Archives.
Harris’ presentation traced South Africa’s journey from the dark hours leading to the dawn of democracy in the early 1990s, through the country’s first few hours of its new political dispensation. Harris spoke about the memory challenges that Nelson Mandela’s government had to confront in order for South Africa to reckon with its dark past. He assessed the successes and failures of the government at the time, contextualising it within the constraint of that period.
Harris also spoke about the state of the public archival system in South Africa, drawing heavily from the report of the Archival Platform to be submitted to the Minister of Arts and Culture in November 2014. Noting several positive attributes, he nonetheless identified huge areas requiring improvement, including:
- Auditor General’s reports pointing out the poor state of record-keeping in governmental bodies over the last number of years
- Inappropriately structured oral history projects leading to inadequate documentation of systemically disregarded communities
- Poor public outreach mechanisms
- Loss of documentary memory especially in electronic environments
- The Promotion of Access to Information Act and other legislative instruments intended to support ‘open democracy’ being used to curtail it
Harris concluded with a quote from Long Walk to Freedom: “The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first stop on a longer and even more difficult road… The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.”
He urged all to take responsibility for surmounting the challenges. The lecture was followed by a lively question and answer session with the audience.