The Archival Platform was established jointly by the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative (APC), University of Cape Town, (see www.apc.uct.ac.za) and the Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF), (see www.nelsonmandela.org, with funding from The Atlantic Philanthropies (see https://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org) in 2009. This was a time when activism in South Africa, and activism concerning archival issues in particular, was, with a few notable exceptions, at a low ebb. The Platform was envisaged as a vehicle for nurturing and promoting archival activism. It did this through information-sharing, dialogue and advocacy for social justice across South Africa’s archival and broader memory sectors. At the heart of the Archival Platform’s mission was a commitment to playing a catalytic role in enabling practitioners, theorists and the general public to reimagine the concept of ‘archive’ and to re-think the ways in which archiving is practiced in a changing world. It supported and facilitated debate and discussion about the nature of archival activity and attempted to infuse new theoretical thinking about archives into archival practice and activism, and practitioner and activist concerns into theoretical and conceptual work. The Platform was active, until 2017.

See here for the Archival Platform’s 2014 Report, “State of the Archives: An Analysis of South Africa’s National Archival System”.

See here for the Archival Platform’s 2018 Report, “A Ground of Struggle: Four decades of Archival Activism in South Africa".