PurposeSouth African public archives have not been able to transform into active documenters of society. As a result, they cannot carry out their mandate of collecting non-public records of lasting value and national significance and recording aspects of the country’s experience that have previously been ignored by archives repositories. This paper aims to discuss efforts by the Gauteng Provincial Archives to transform the archival landscape in South Africa by collecting sports memories. This is because, in democratic South Africa, the archival landscape was expected to change and reflect the nation’s diversity, despite the fact that it still largely reflected the Western-dominated global mainstream.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on the authors’ personal experiences with the development and operation of the Gauteng Provincial Archives. The authors are also involved in the Gauteng Provincial Archives’ oral history project, which aims to build an inclusive archive by recording oral histories of sports memories across the province.FindingsThe construction of the Gauteng Archives Repository has ushered in a chance to decolonise South African archives by collecting sports memories. These are windows of opportunity through which ordinary people can include their own experiences, filling in the gaps left by colonial and apartheid archives.Originality/valueThis paper offers practical experience in transforming and decolonising archives through collecting sports memories.

ABSTRACTThe Van Kalker Studio, started by the late J. G. Van Kalker in 1937, became one of the most popular photographic studios in Cape Town. Against a backdrop of increasing racial discrimination which culminated in apartheid in 1948, the Van Kalker photographic studio provided a space in which the aspirations of black people could be articulated through imaging. Despite the effects of apartheid legislation such as the Group Areas Act (1950), the studio became part of many families’ traditions as sitters could present themselves as dignified and respectable. Portraiture became a means through which the sitters could narrate their own stories. As these photographs found their way into collections of frames that went onto mantelpieces and walls, they took on shrine-like qualities of devotion and reverence. Through the display of Van Kalker photographs as material objects in prominent positions in the domestic interior, it provided a way for many people to enter history without words in an intimate space where the home was transformed into a visual collection of cultural knowledge and possibility.

The Regulation of Gatherings Act (RGA) places strict guidelines on how to exercise the right to protest, with particular emphasis on the submission of a notice of gathering to the responsible person within a municipality in terms of sections 2(4) and 3 of the Act. However, municipalities do not proactively make the notice of gathering templates available for public use (or may not have these at all), and often do not publicise the details of the designated responsible person. To test municipalities’ compliance with the RGA, the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) enlisted the help of the South African History Archive (SAHA) to submit a series of Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) requests to every municipality in South Africa. PAIA requests were also submitted to the South African Police Service (SAPS) for records relating to public order policing. The initiative aimed to provide these templates and related documents to interested parties as an open source resource on the protestinfo.org.za website. The results of these efforts show that compliance with the RGA is uneven. This article explores the flaws in the regulatory environment that have led to this level of apathy within government, despite the crucial role of the right to protest and the right of access to information as enabling rights in our constitutional democracy. An analysis of the full PAIA request dataset shows the extent of government’s resistance to facilitating these enabling rights, and provides insights into remedial interventions. The article concludes with a series of recommendations, which centre on statutory reforms to the RGA and PAIA to ensure appropriate sanction for non-compliance by government, proactive disclosure of relevant information, and emergency provisions allowing curtailed procedural requirements. The intention of the proposed amendments is to minimise the possibility that these fundamental, enabling rights might be frustrated.

The Regulation of Gatherings Act (RGA) places strict guidelines on how to exercise the right to protest, with particular emphasis on the submission of a notice of gathering to the responsible person within a municipality in terms of sections 2(4) and 3 of the Act. However, municipalities do not proactively make the notice of gathering templates available for public use (or may not have these at all), and often do not publicise the details of the designated responsible person. To test municipalities’ compliance with the RGA, the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) enlisted the help of the South African History Archive (SAHA) to submit a series of Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) requests to every municipality in South Africa. PAIA requests were also submitted to the South African Police Service (SAPS) for records relating to public order policing. The initiative aimed to provide these templates and related documents to interested parties as an open source resource on the protestinfo.org.za website. The results of these efforts show that compliance with the RGA is uneven. This article explores the flaws in the regulatory environment that have led to this level of apathy within government, despite the crucial role of the right to protest and the right of access to information as enabling rights in our constitutional democracy. An analysis of the full PAIA request dataset shows the extent of government’s resistance to facilitating these enabling rights, and provides insights into remedial interventions. The article concludes with a series of recommendations, which centre on statutory reforms to the RGA and PAIA to ensure appropriate sanction for non-compliance by government, proactive disclosure of relevant information, and emergency provisions allowing curtailed procedural requirements. The intention of the proposed amendments is to minimise the possibility that these fundamental, enabling rights might be frustrated.

In an important contribution to grounding our understanding of current political dynamics, Southall corrals the primary strands of historical and contemporary experience to weave a narrative that s...

(2008). Reflections upon Posters in South Africa, and the Medu Art Ensemble. Critical Interventions: Vol. 2, Visual Publics, Guest Editor: Peter Probst, pp. 158-167.

The South African Law Reform Commission has proposed legislation to regulate what is variously referred to in international jurisdictions as 'data protection' and 'information privacy protection'. The Law Commission's own formulation of the basic subject-matter of its proposals is 'protection of personal information'. It has accordingly short-titled its proposed legislation, the Protection of Personal Information Act. If this name sticks and the legislation is enacted, it will in all likelihood, given the South African fondness for clunky acronyms, become known as the POPIA. Personal information (a term of art meaning information, irrespective of the medium in which it appears, that reveals something about someone) is, in the Commission's proposals, to be protected by a complex regime of rights and remedies aimed at regulating its collection and dissemination and the uses to which it may be put. Along the familiar lines of the European model for data-protection regimes, the Commission's proposed legislation centres on a set of 'information protection principles' which flesh out a general and higher-level requirement that personal information must be processed 'in a reasonable manner in order not to infringe the privacy of the data subject'.

The growing sense that governments are becoming more secretive in response to the threat of terrorism means that citizens as requesters of information call upon records professionals to assist in making governments more open to the need for information. Information professionals can use the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) to demonstrate the need for greater transparency to support freedom of information core principles of good governance, participative democracy, and individual self-determination (protection of privacy, access to personal information), and to ensure that information is seen as a socio-economic resource which has positive spin-off for economic development. The South African History Archive (SAHA) has undertaken fieldwork from which lessons can be learned of the difficulties and challenges of balancing an access to information regime with proper implementation strategies. This article aims to look at the South African access to information regime and the challenges that have prevented effective access to information in South Africa as experienced by SAHA. It argues for greater participation by records professionals in striving for greater transparency. Keywords : access to information, freedom of information legislation, South Africa, South African History Archive ESARBICA Journal Vol. 24 2005: 58-62

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