Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA) Witness Seminar
Jo-Anne Duggan
I was privileged to attend the Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA) Witness Seminar in September. This event, facilitated by Matt Cook, Professor of Modern History, Birkbeck University of London, was intended to contribute to the development of an organisational history of GALA as it prepares to celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2017.
Introducing the nature and purpose of the seminar, Cook noted that contemporary historians are turning increasingly to oral history as a technique to supplement or extend written records and to create new resources.
‘Witness Seminars’, he explained, are a form of oral history collection that brings together a group of people associated with a particular set of circumstances or events to recall, discuss, debate and share their memories and experiences. The kind of information gained from processes differs significantly from the kind of information elicited in one-on-one interviews or accessed through written records.
The seminar was structured around three key themes: origins and early years; projects and programmes; and aspirations and achievements. Material drawn from GALA’s extensive archives—photographs, newsletters, pamphlets, publications and other ephemera—was used to trigger memories and spark discussion.
Participants included LGBTI activists, several of whom had played a significant role in ensuring that LGBTI rights were included in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa and enshrined in legislation, present and former staff and board members, archivists and student interns.
As a relative outsider, who has engaged with GALA on occasions, and as director of an organisation, the Archival Platform, that shares a commitment to social justice, I found it interesting to observe the process, hear the stories evoked by the themes, the facilitator’s questions and the archival material, and to tease out some of the threads emerging from the discussion.
The photographs from the archive proved to be a great discussion point. Some photographs were greeted with great hilarity and resounding guffaws. Others spurred vivid accounts of struggles won and lost and an energetic recounting of past arguments and strategies. While the photographs brought particular people and events to mind, and in so doing certainly added to the organisation’s developing institutional history, the emotional impact of the images on the participants lent a particular poignancy to the discussion. I was touched by the tenderness with which participants handled some of the photographs of friends, colleagues and comrades who had passed on, and the palpable sense of loss this evidenced. The affective impact of the archive is sorely underrated.
Several issues threaded through the discussions offer some insight into the origins and evolution of GALA and its continued existence in an environment where many other nongovernmental organisations have failed. Firstly, GALA came into being during a critical period in the history of our country. It was a time when activists and activist organisations were inspired and driven to action by the possibility of creating a fundamentally better, more equitable and just society. Many of those involved in the early years of GALA were engaged across a wide spectrum of activity: building organisations; making input into the Constitution and the legislation required to give it substance; creating ‘safe spaces’ for marginalised people; and aligning the struggle for LGBTI rights with the struggle for human rights. The political context and construction of the GALA archive was mentioned repeatedly, as was the profound contribution of people whose public and private lives intersected with these struggles.
Secondly, the organisation came into being at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis. In the words of one of the participants, “it was a time when death stalked us”. There was a growing concern that the records of lives, which in a hetero-normative society might have been passed on to their children, were in danger of being lost. This was linked to concerns that the archives of the ‘secret lives’ of a generation were also endangered. This reminded participants of the enormous changes that our constitutional democracy had brought about and the significant effect that those changes had on the LGBTI community.
Thirdly, and of particular interest to those concerned with the sustainability of activist archives, were the factors which enabled GALA to thrive: access to funding through Interfund and later Atlantic Philanthropies, on both occasions facilitated by Gerald Kraak who had a deeply personal interest and commitment to GALA’s work; and support from other, more established entities, the University of the Witwatersrand Historical Papers Research Archive based in the William Cullen Library and the South African History Archive (SAHA), also, for a time hosted by Wits.
Lastly, GALA came into being at a time when the issue of archives was a ‘hot topic’, with archival heavyweights like Jacques Derrida participating in ‘Refiguring the Archive’ a provocative seminar series initiated by the University of the Witwatersrand’s Graduate School for the Humanities and Social Sciences in conjunction with the National Archives of South Africa, the University’s Historical Papers Research Archive, GALA and SAHA.
The seminar ended with a discussion on a number of questions for the future: how to continue to build the archive vigorously; what does it mean to be a ‘community archive’ in an ever changing environment; and how to engage with the youth in a way that foregrounds the notion of archival activity as knowledge production. In conclusion, one participant remarked on the increasing number of researchers visiting GALA to draw on its archive for research and publications, emphasising how this extends GALA’s reach, creates new resources that support scholarship and build awareness, and ensures that the archive is continually renewed.