Posted on May 8, 2012
(Left to right)Jo-Anne Duggan, Mbongiseni Buthelezi, Xolelwa Kashe-Katiya, Harriet Deacon, Brenton Maart, Dineo Skosana, Emile Maurice, Lucelle Campbell,Musa Hlatshwayo, Thokozani Mlambi,Nokhanyo Mhlana and Vuyani Booi.
THE ARCHIVAL PLATFORM TEAM
The Archival Platform has a lean staff complement that includes a director who is responsible for developing, managing and sustaining the Archival Platform and an Ancestral Stories Coordinator who holds a part-time post. The Archival Platform is fortunate to be able to draw on the services of a team of committed and enthusiastic correspondents who report on activities and liaise with stakeholders in Gauteng, the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu Natal. We look forward to extending this network to other provinces in the second half of 2012.
Jo-Anne Duggan is the director of the Archival Platform. She holds degrees in art and education from the University of Cape Town. Having become keenly engaged in the power of heritage in the 1980s, she participated in policy-making for the arts education, provincial and national heritage policies and worked with national heritage institutions and structures as well as community based heritage organisations. Duggan joined the Archival platform after a decade of working as a heritage development consultant.
Mbongiseni Butheleziis the Archival Platform's Ancestral Stories coordinator and has been jointly appointed by the Archival Platform and Department of English at the University of Cape Town. Buthelezi holds degrees in literary studies from the University of Kwa Zulu Natal and Columbia University. His PhD was on the uses of the oral artistic forms forms - izibongo (praise poetry), izithakazelo (clan praises) and amahubo (songs) - to recall precolonial pasts among people who trace their histories to today's northern KwaZulu-Natal.
Correspondents
Xolelwa Kashe-Katiya holds degrees from the University of Cape Town and the University of Pretoria. She has worked extensively in public and private sector organisations and agencies. Kashe-Katiya is currently enrolled for an MPhil. at UCT. Her research interests lie in the field of human remains and the contestation thereof in post-apartheid South Africa. Kashe-Katiya was Deputy Director of the Archival platform from 2010 to 2011.
Harriet Deacon (Ph.D. Cambridge) is a heritage consultant based in London, and a correspondent to the Archival Platform, currently running its twitter feed. She was the first Director of the Platform in 2009, after working in the heritage sector in South Africa for ten years. Her research focuses on cultural practice, heritage and health. She has written on traditional male circumcision, AIDS-related stigma, intangible heritage and heritage policy.
Thokozani Mhlambi, based in Johannesburg, is a musicologist who holds degrees from the University of Cape Town and who shifts between diverse creative genres, from classical music to sound art and display. He is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cape Town. His research project 'Lalela Zulu': The Early Years of Black Radio Broadcast in South Africa ca 1940', fuses elements of critical theory and Africanist thought and philosophy with insights from the field of music scholarship.
Lucy Campbell, based in Cape Town, was sensitised to the damage associated with a one-sided narrative during the time she spent working at Iziko Museums of Cape Town. Drawing on information collected during her ten years she began to research her own ancestry. She established Transcending History Tours, which takes visitors to museums and sites of memory, to offer a fresh, contemporary perspective on the lives of slaves and to affirm the contribution that they made to the social, economic, political and cultural life of Cape Town.
Emile Maurice, a curator, author and former teacher, has worked in the arts and culture and heritage sectors for many years. Based in Cape Town, he holds degrees from the University of Cape Town and Syracuse University, New York. A former employee of Iziko South African National Gallery and Heritage Agency, Maurice has been involved with a variety of projects and exhibitions over the years, and has also published widely in brochures, books and exhibition catalogues. He is currently a curator at the University of the Western Cape.
Musa Hlatshwayo, based in Durban, is an internationally recognized award winning performing artist, choreographer and theatre producer whose research based, socio-political and artistically groundbreaking productions have toured internationally. Hlatshwayo holds a BA Hons in performance studies from the University of KwaZulu Natal and is passionate about the role of the media, anthropology and the arts in modern day society.
Vuyani Gweki Booi, based in Alice in the Eastern Cape holds degrees from the Univeristy of Fort Hare (UFH) and the University of the Western Cape. As curator of collections at National Heritage and Cultural Studies Centre at UFH, he focuses on the management of the declared cultural treasure and the archives of Liberation Movements of South Africa. Booi has been involved in various regional, national and international cultural heritage transformation projects, conferences and seminars.
Nokhanyo Mhlana, based in Mthatha, is an Advancement Creative at Transkei Land Service Organisation, holds a degree in Economics from the University of the Free State and diplomas from the Commercial Producers Association the Vega school of Advertising). She has worked on the production of TV/Radio commercials and in rural development with focus on lobbying and mobilisising for land rights in the rural Eastern Cape and food sovereignty. As a qualified Sangoma, she is also a custodians of culture, indigenous knowledge and heritage.
Dineo Skosana, based in Johannesburg, is a pre-Doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand and is attached to the 'Local Histories- Present Realities' programme. Her research focuses on the relationship between chieftainship and local governance within the Kekana chiefdom in Vaaltyn, Limpopo. She has a particular interest in land claims in South Africa and cultural practises amongst different ethnic groups.
Brenton Maart, based in Cape Town, holds degrees from the University of the Witswatersrand and Rhodes University. An artist, writer and curator he has worked at the KZNSA Gallery, the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the Freedom Park Trust. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Centre for Curating the Archive at UCT. His Ph.D. project examines inadvertent monuments, ruins and palimpsests of apartheid in buildings located in previous South African homelands.
STEERING COMMITTEE
The Archival Platform Team takes guidance from an active and engaged Steering Committee: Professor Carolyn Hamilton (NRF Chair in Archive and Public Culture at the University of Cape Town), Verne Harris (Head: Memory Programming at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory) Sello Hatang (Head of Department: Public programming at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory), Noel Solani of the Nelson Mandela Museum and Professor Njabulo Ndebele (Public intellectual and Andrew W Mellon Research Fellow with the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative, University of Cape Town).