The Archival Platform interacts with delegates to the SAMA and OHASA conferences

Generally we interact with the sector at a distance - through our website and our newsletter. We are, however, embarking on a campaign to meet with our colleagues around the cuntry, through a series of face-to-face engagements. This month we enjoyed meeting with delegates to the South African Museums Association (SAMA) and Oral History Association of South Africa (OHASA) conferences. Each of our engagements took the same form: we made a presentation about the Archival Platform; constituted a panel to discuss family histories; and hosted a social function so that we could engage informally.

The 74th SAMA conference that took place at the Durban’s Riverside Hotel was the highlight of the year for the local museums sector. It gave practitioners, academics and government officials an opportunity to share ideas and to network. The four-day event started on the 26th of September with a function hosted by the Killie Campbell Collections and finished on the 29th of September with an Annual General Meeting for SAMA members.

The Archival Platform’s input, on the afternoon of Tuesday 28th, followed a session on archival memory and related issues, a good introduction to the AP. Jatti Bredekamp from Iziko Museums chaired the session.Fiona Mitchell who works on the private archive delivered a paper on the way in which the personal archive of Dr. Ian player, a well known conservationist whose archive spans his conservation career. Rachel Williams’s presentation on the coelacanth bibliography illustrated the power of collective memory in a library context. Ria van der Merve presented the University of Pretoria Archives virtual classroom, wherein the use of modern technology has been used to allow the archival collection to be used and viewed by a wide audience. The project has enabled the involvement of the entire university community as it married archival research and museum exhibition approaches, in addition to this various departments such as Information Technology were instrumental in the design.  This set the tone for the AP session as one of the issues the AP serves to address is the need for discussions on technological issues facing the sector.

The Archival Platform presentation was well received. Presentations by Ancestral Stories panelists, Pearl Sithole from Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, activist and author Zuleikha Mayat, and Troy Meyers, an entrepreneur who is descended from one of the founders of DurbanTroy Meyers stimulated a heated debate about the relative value and veracity of documentary and oral sources.  Delegates enjoyed the wine and snacks that followed this engagement, and we were thrilled to hear how present enjoyed our newsletter and offered to write for us or hold meetings in other pasrts of the country. We look forward to taking up some of those offers

We circulated our “Letters to Lulu” postcards, asking that delegates their concerns regarding the sector for the Minister of Arts and Culture, but, while some responded, delegates were wary of speaking out and revealing their identities. This concern was shared by delegates to the OHASA conference, out next port of call.

The OHASA history conference focused on suppressed and marginalised histories, the role of women, performance, ownership and control. On the day that the Archival Platform was presented, contested memories, heritage preservation and archives were the main themes. Digitisation was also cited as a challenge during the archives session. However, what distinguished the conference from the museums conference was the issue of authenticity with regards to oral history.

Once again the Archival Platform found an opportunity to contribute in terms of the use of oral tradition that is such an important aspect of the Ancestral Stories project and presentations by the panelists: Mbongiseni Buthelezi and Xolelwa Kashe Katiya of the Archival platform and Professor Phil Bonner of the Department of History, University of the Witwatersrand oce again formed the basis for an interesting discussion.Challenges posed by the fragmented state of the sector weres also interrogated as was the AP’s role influencing the in the way in which the archive is conceptualised, or re-conceptualised.

Please take a lookt at Mbongiseni’s Ancestral Stories Editorial: October 2010 for more details about issues raised in the debates following AP Panel discussions at these conferences.

We look forward to engagements in other provinces next year.

Xolelwa Kashe Katiya

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