The Archival Sliver: A Perspective on the Construction of Social Memory in Archives and the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy

Abstract

Understanding of and feeling for a concept are shaped inevitably by the weighting of experience. In my case, both as a South African and as a practising archivist, experience has been dominated by the drama of South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy. This drama has absorbed the complex elements of personal experience, and has transcribed my thinking around the word ‘archives’ into an indelible metaphor — ‘the archival sliver’. As process, the transcription probably began in the late 1980s, when I did volunteer work for an organisation providing support to political detainees, trialists and prisoners. At the time we needed no documentary evidence to demonstrate that organs of the state were conducting a dirty tricks campaign against opponents of apartheid. We knew they were. Now, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) unfolds the details of that campaign,¹ it is oral rather than documentary evidence that carries the story. The archival record, both oral and documentary, is but a sliver of social memory, and the archival residue in documents is but a sliver of the documentary record. Between 1996 and 1998 I represented the National Archives in a TRC investigation into the destruction of public records.2 This investigation exposed a large-scale and systematic sanitisation of official memory resources authorised at the highest levels of government. Between 1990 and 1994 huge volumes of public records were destroyed in an attempt to keep the apartheid state’s darkest secrets hidden.3

This essay draws heavily on four articles by me published previously: ‘Towards a culture of transparency: public rights of access to official records in South Africa’, American Archivist 57, 4 (1994); ‘Redefining archives in South Africa: public archives and society in transition, 1990–1996’, Archivaria 42 (1996); ‘Transforming discourse and legislation: a perspective on South Africa’s new National Archives Act’, ACARM Newsletter 18 (1996); and ‘Claiming less, delivering more: a critique of positivist formulations on archives in South Africa’, Archivaria 44 (1997). I am grateful to Ethel Kriger (National Archives of South Africa) and Tim Nuttall (University of Natal) for offering sometimes tough comment on an early draft of the essay. I remain, of course, fully responsible for the final text. It was prepared originally for a book Archival Truths and Historical Consequences edited by the Canadians Terry Cook and Joan Schwartz. I am grateful to them for permission to use an adapted, shorter version for this book.

The 17-member Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in 1995 with a four-fold mandate: to establish as complete a picture as possible of the causes, nature and extent of gross human rights violations committed in South Africa between 1960 and 1994; to facilitate the granting of amnesty to perpetrators of gross human rights violations associated with a political objective; to recommend appropriate reparation for the victims of gross human rights violations; and to compile a report of its activities, findings and recommendations. The Commission’s final report was submitted to President Mandela in October 1998. However, the work of the Commission’s Amnesty Committee proceeded and is anticipated to continue through 2001.