Posted on November 22, 2010
We have a right to information. It is essential to the wellbeing of individuals, communities, organisations and states. It’s an issue that the Archival Platform will continue to foreground and to address.
Why? Because we are committed to promoting the role of archivists in deepening democracy through the use of memory and archives as dynamic public resources. We believe that information and records are fundamental to the exercise of democracy, accountability and good governance and that archives have a crucial role to play in advocacy, restorative justice, historical memory, struggles against impunity and the exercise of human rights.
In taking this stand we’re aligning ourselves with a number of significant initiatives. The "Right to Truth" document, issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2009, says that, "The recognition that archives and archivists play a central role in undergirding human rights has grown over the last decade." Human rights archives are playing an increasingly important role in advocacy, restorative justice, historical memory, and struggles against impunity.
Our Archival Platform Editorial this month focuses on the power of information and the archive as a mechanism for holding our democratic government to account, and reports on the status of the Protection of Information Bill.
In our efforts to keep up to date with relevant issues, the Archival Platform subscribes to many different newsletters and news and information feeds, and we are constantly inspired by the ideas and activities that we read about. This month, instead of publishing guest posts, we’ve decided to share a couple of our favourite sites and initiatives with you. The WITNESS Blog celebrated American Archives Month by posting a series of articles exploring the theme of archives and activism. Archivists Watch is a site that focuses on the relationship between archives, records and information, and the way in which these can be used to uphold and protect human rights. The Memory and Justice website, established by the International Centre for Transitional Justice, provides a forum for the exchange of views about memorialisation as a form of accountability for past atrocities.
What we like most about these sites is that they tell stories of initiatives that make a difference!
We bring you news of a couple of exciting local initiatives: Africa Media Online, which has recently digitised over 24 000 images from local museum; the Luthuli Museum and the 50th anniversary celebrations of the award of the Nobel Prize to Chief Albert Luthuli; the South African Heritage Resources Agency’s intention to declare the District Six Cultural Landscape as a national heritage site; and the development of Community House as a labour and community history museum centred around the Trade Union Library and its archive. We’ve also published information about the Department of Arts and Culture’s 2009/2010 Annual Report and presentation to the parliamentary portfolio committee.
Protection of, and access to information is an issue of almost universal concern. It lies at the heart of struggles against repressive regimes and the stands as a beacon on the route to the universal realisation of human rights. As active citizens of a democratic country it is our right to be able to access information and our responsibility to ensure that this right is respected and exercised responsibly.
Bearing this in mind, we’ve been following the passage of the Protection of Information Bill with some concern, and draw your attention to ways in which similar issues are making the news in Zimbabwe and the United States of America.
We’ve taken note of the Declaration of the Civil Society Conference, and hope that it will inspire local archivists to take action. We read the Public Protector’s speech on whistleblowing with interest and wonder how the protection of whistleblowers will be accommodated in the future.
On the international front, we draw your attention to the Universal Declaration on Archives, which has been adopted as a core pillar of the International Council on Archives and bring you news of two recent meetings, the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safekeeping of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, and the International Council of Museums General Assembly.
Our Ancestral Stories are proving very popular and we’re delighted to see that they’re provoking comment! In the Ancestral Stories EditorialMbongiseni Buthelezi teases out a number of difficult questions to do with the relationship between individual family histories and sweeping national narratives and asks: how then do we speak of the nation’s past? Vivien Horler talks to Mbongiseni Buthelezi about how her family has come to be South African and British as a result of migration between England, the United States and South Africa in search of work opportunities in the mines. Mbongiseni also follows up on Phineas Ndwandwe's July post about the Ndwandwe association, Ubumbano LwamaZwide. He reports on his trip to the Zwide Heritage Celebration held in Mseleni in northern KwaZulu-Natal that brought together Ndwandwe people from KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, Mozambique and Swaziland. Tony Harding tells of his distressing findings when excavating the silenced history of his family's involvement in the slave trade.
Remember, the Archival Platform welcomes contributions, news and information about events, initiatives and projects, debates and issues of interest or importance to our readers.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes
Jo-Anne