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Using Archives in South Africa: Planning a Research Trip in the ‘Information Age’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Joanne L. Duffy
Joanne L. Duffy*
Affiliation:
Sheffield University, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford
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Extract

Much has changed since I first undertook research in South Africa six years ago. It is only having recently begun a a new research project that I have realized just how different things are now. Even more has changed since the ending of minority rule, as there has been a restructuring of both the State Archives Service and of the libraries of national deposit, as discussed later in this paper. The paper emerges from my reflections at this time and discusses both my experience of using archives in South Africa in the past and some of the resources which I have been able to make use of in planning my next research trip. My original research was on Afrikaner nationalist politics and identities in the 1930s and 1940s, and I now plan to work on Afrikaner moderates and English-speakers in the United Party during the same period, examining issues of identity and ideology, imperialism and nationalism. My work has taken me to several different archives in South Africa, which fall into two distinct types. The first of these are government archives, and the second are university archives. This paper will draw on my experiences of the archives I visited in 1997 and 1998, and on a brief trip I made to South Africa in 2002.

Government archives in South Africa are held by the National Archives of South Africa (NASA), established in 1996 by the National Archives of South Africa Act (No. 43 of 1996). The National Archives replaced the old State Archives Service, and was structured to take into account changes in the provincial structure and to “reflect the post apartheid political order.”

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 30 , 2003 , pp. 421 - 430
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2003

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References

1 A very useful, although slightly dated, discussion of doing research in South Africa is Feinberg, H.M., “Research in South Africa: To Know an Archive,” HA 13(1986), 391–98Google Scholar. Many of Feinberg's observations still hold true. The current paper is seen as complementing Feinberg's rather than superseding it (except of course where Feinberg's information is obsolete.)

2 See http://www.national.archives.gov.za/aboutnasa_content.html

3 See http://www.national.archives.gov.za/aboutnasa_content.html. Note that the archives of central government since 1910, and the archives of the former Transvaal Province and its predecessors, are both held at the National Archives Repository in Pretoria.

4 Feinburg, , “Research in South Africa,” 392, 394Google Scholar.

5 See http://www.national.archives.gov.za/aboutnasa_content.html

6 See http://www.national.archives.gov.za/arch_act.htm

7 Information received in a phone call to the National Archives Repository in Pretoria.

8 See http://www.uovs.ac.za/lib/arca/User_Inforination.htm

9 See http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/mss/existing/intro1.htm and http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/mss/existing/notable.htm

10 See http://www.sun.ac.za/library/about/Collections/SpecialCollections.html

11 See http://www.wits.ac.za/histp/

12 See http://www.unisa.ac.za/library/afdeling/client/argief/archcoll1.html

13 The same point was made by Feinberg, who stressed the fact that staff were being rotated around different departments within the archives, thus limiting their experience in any one department and reducing their effectiveness in being able to answer reader enquiries. Feinburg, , “Research in South Africa,” 392–93Google Scholar.

14 See http://www.nlsa.ac.za/about_where.html

15 See http://www.nlsa.ac.za/about_where.html

16 See ‘Structuring of NAAIRS queries’, http://www.national.archives.gov.za/querystru.html

* information current as of January 2003.