APRIL 2014
A RESPONSE TO THE ARCHIVAL PLATFORM NEWSLETTER: ‘REFLECTING ON 2013: LOOKING FORWARD TO 2014’ AND ON TH THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN ‘ARCHIVAL ARMY’
One of the successes of ‘The Archival Platform’ is that it observes and alerts professionals and interested net-surfers to the challenges and opportunities facing the archives and heritage sectors and it provides an essential previously non-existent forum for debate. It provides snapshots of fascinating heritage and archival issues that often floated way below the surface until neglect brought them to the political or bureaucratic surface like ‘Jaws’ to bite the legs of wallowing politicians and decision-makers. Often this results in panicked and superficial decisions being taken until the problems submerge again and the bureaucrats can go back to basking.
Congratulations to the Platform for their contribution to the debate. Special congratulations to Jo-Anne Duggan for her end-of-year summary of the archival challenges and her suggestions for addressing them. The analysis of the problems is cogent and comprehensive and the suggestions she makes for addressing them provide serious food for thought. The call for the mobilisation of an ‘Archival Army’ is inspiring.
Given my involuntary and enforced departure from the position of National Archivist I am going to try to ensure that my contribution to the mental buffet does not include a dish of sour grapes. However, readers must be warned that my views are based on the experience and reflections of a manager and practitioner, not of an objective observer.
Let us look at the ‘Good News’ first.
• The re-establishment of the National Archives Advisory Council is to be welcomed. However, it is an advisory body and does not have, nor should it have, operational responsibilities. It was created to replace the dysfunctional National Archives Commission and to provide a forum where provincial interests could be represented. This has always been a problem because only a few provinces have appointed their own archives councils and MECs have not always found appropriate nominees to fill the gap. It is not appropriate for me to comment on the appointment of a new National Archivist.
• The upgrading of the National Automated Archival Information Retrieval System (NAAIRS) is good news and really to be welcomed as this will ensure far better service to the archival user. The argument that the poor had no access to electronic information and, therefore, services such as NAAIRS need not be prioritised, has been eroded by time and the spread of technology, such as smart-phones, among the youth. The provision of computers and internet access in community libraries through the conditional grant (also a responsibility of the Chief Director who is National Archivist) makes web-access possible for many more people. The challenge with the upgrade is that of providing content. A fancy website will be an empty shell unless records are transferred to the archives, accessioned, arranged and data-coded with accurate metadata, for inclusion in NAAIRS. Partnerships with cultural, heritage and educational organisations are necessary so as to encourage people to understand the exciting benefits of on-line archival research and to utilise the potential of the upgraded NAAIRS.
• The construction of new repositories in those provinces which did not receive archival infrastructure when the function was transferred to provinces, is also a welcome development. The challenge will be ensuing the orderly transfer of records, rather than the joyous dumping of boxes of files by provincial entities anxious to clear cluttered store rooms and corridors. This means that the provincial archives must be properly capacitated and their staff must be properly trained.
• The engagement of the Auditor General, the SA Human Rights Commission and other important entities with issues of records keeping is critical, but raises the question of the positioning of the National Archives in a Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) which does not have a seamless connection with such over-arching agencies.
I am not going to chew over the ‘Challenges’ point by point, but here is an overview:
• The relationship between archives, heritage, records management and good governance and accountability has been well expressed and to give PARI (the Public Affairs Research Institute), the organisation to which I am currently affiliated, due credit, the thinkers and analysts there have been applying their minds to the problem for some time and I hope they will agree to partnering with the Platform in a workshop to consider the report that the platform is finalising during this year.
• The location of the National Archives in the Department of Arts and Culture as part of a Chief Directorate which is also responsible for Libraries poses both challenges and opportunities. The challenge is lack of visibility and poor articulation with other government departments. The opportunity is that there is a convergence between archives and libraries because of the now almost overpowering role of electronic and digital information. This is an existential challenge for both professions. Frankly, I do not know if a bureaucratic entity such as the DAC which is entranced by the glitter and glamour of arts and culture is able to address the intellectual and structural issues posed by the digital information challenges.
• Underlying the low status of provincial archives and the lack of training and capacity from which they suffer is the long-standing constitutional conundrum: archives and libraries ‘other than national’ are an exclusive provincial legislative competence. I have criticised the national DAC for being focused on the glamorous parts of the portfolio, the problem is worse in provinces where top MECs and HODs also like the sweatier Sports part of their portfolios. There is no Archives World Cup to compete for attention with the FIFA Soccer World Cup.
• Training is a prerequisite and it must be followed by proper career pathing. These days it has to be predicated upon the application of core archival principles and values in the digital environment. A digitisation policy is only half the story, the other half is the proper archiving of electronic records. The link between the two is the insertion of archival principles of arrangement and intellectual control into the development of metadata and descriptive codes.
Addressing the Challenges or Preparing for Battle:
• Visionary Leadership: I do not know of any Archival King Shaka, Emperor Napoleon or Margaret Thatcher. A political champion is desirable, but not essential. It is invidious to talk about individual ministers, but there are some pointers to what is and is not required: neglect and disinterest are equally to be avoided as is the trenchant and assertive interference of politicians without any understanding of archives. The point I want to make is that I do not think the personality of the politician is an over-riding factor. The system has to be right and the visionary leadership has to be collective and grow from the profession. A politician can and will champion a cause when the cause can be seen to enhance the politician’s agenda.
• Should there be a strong ‘Executive’ Archives Council? The problem with the defunct National Archives Commission is that it tried to set itself up as a parallel to the National Archives and competed for funding and records. The National and Provincial Archives need to be within government, not outside, because they are responsible for official records and records-keeping. National Archives should be the records equivalent of the Department of Public Service and Administration for personnel or the Department of Public Works for buildings. Note, I did not say the Public Service Commission or the Heritage Agencies. I reiterate, the National Archives must be a strong agency within the public service; SAHRA and the PSC primarily have oversight roles. The National Archives is not and can never function at an optimal level when it is a sub-section of a branch in a small department like DAC. The National Archivist needs to be able to manage the dedicated budget and to appoint and train staff. One of the tragedies at the moment is that appointments in the National Archives are currently hamstrung by internal politics within the DAC and this is demoralising for archivists who have every justification in seeking greener pastures.
• The National Archives Council should be advisory and I believe that the problem is that it has never had the opportunity to realise its potential. It has the statutory responsibly to advise the minister and perhaps, armed with the Platform’s report, it is the time to get an audience with the (possibly new) minister after the election. Inevitably, there will be restructuring after the election and the case for the National Archives as an autonomous Government Component needs to be made very strongly.
• One critical issue that has to be confronted is the Constitutional issue. Only after proper inter-connectedness between the National and Provincial Archives is legislated can we begin to work towards seamless service delivery and co-ordination. Here the Archives Advisory Council can play a critical role in driving the drafting of new legislation. However, before we begin with this course, a comprehensive survey of all legislation, national and provincial, that impacts on archives and records-keeping is necessary. Two challenges come to mind immediately: First, we need to look at the role of the Registrar of Deeds, the Registrars of the Courts, the Surveyor-General and other Offices of Record which currently are not encompassed by the Archives Act, a lacuna which needs to be addressed with all deliberate haste. Secondly, the legal requirements for electronic and financial records-keeping require a serious dose of reality to be brought to bear on those institutions whose customers have to be FICA’d and RICA’d. For instance, my bank demands my ID and my electricity account every time I say ‘Good Morning’ and these are lovingly copied and filed (electronically and hard copy nogal). There must be mountains of these documents for every bank customer – all blamed on FICA. Then, for cellphones there is RICA also requiring duplication of the same documents ad infinitum. The current Archives Act is hopeless in the light of these challenges, because these were not even conceived of in the 1990s when the Act was drafted.
To conclude: There is something seriously missing from Jo-Anne’s reflections and to revert to my ‘Jaws’ metaphor, it is a large dangerous predator below the surface, and when it surfaces there will be (and already are) painful and even lethal consequences. It is going to be one of the most important battles for the new Archival Army, or for documentary lifeguards, to fight. I am referring to the records and archives of municipalities and local government bodies. Constitutionally this is the responsibility of provincial archives. In practice they have no capacity to address the issue and this void has dangerous consequences for good governance, accountability and public safety. The amalgamation of municipalities set at odds, and in some instances destroyed, long-standing and relatively stable records-keeping systems, especially where smaller municipalities were subsumed into their bigger neighbours, and where new entities were created without the necessary records keeping infrastructure, expertise and oversight being in place. Changes in technology are applied at local level without external archival monitoring. Plans are destroyed, infrastructure is unmapped and council decision-making is not properly recorded. A small example in my immediate vicinity: The City of Tshwane is rolling out a Bus Rapid Transit system and my area is in chaos with the main arterial road dug up for several kilometres. Picks have been thumped through cables and pipes and we are tormented by water and power outages. The contractors have admitted that the maps and plans provided by the municipality are inaccurate and out of date or that the records do not exist. There is no entity or capacity at Gauteng provincial archival level to provide records-management guidance to the municipalities and this impacts on service delivery at every level.
Let battle commence and lets make it safe to get back into the archival water!
Graham Dominy
[Dr Graham Dominy is currently an Honorary Research Associate at the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI), an affiliate of the University of the Witwatersrand, and served for more than ten years as National Archivist of South Africa until he was illegally suspended and later unfairly dismissed by the DAC in 2011. In June 2013 the DAC was forced into a settlement which was made an Order of the Labour Court. This Court Order has not been fully implemented by the DAC and legal action is still under way]