There is a sense in which the past serves as a signpost and points at the possible direction that the future with take. The record of the past can be more than just a detailed account of events. It can mirror both the humannes of the actors in the process of making history and contextualise their lifeview so that we can be able to see how a people's dream of the future is linked to their experiences and conditioned by the suffering they went through. This link between the present and the past becomes more organic if the past is recreated in a way that makes it real and gives us a privileged view of people going about their ordinary business of planning and shaping their future. If later generations should choose to venerate such makers of history and make them appear like demi-gods, an accurate record of their lives will show the ordinariness and humanness of people and in a sense therefore provide a balanced view.
Archives then provide a window into the past that enables the researcher to feel full empathy with the subject of his research. The more complete and sequentially ordered the record, the less chance there will be of the researcher having to piece together bits of information and having to fill in gaps from his own imagination when making a judgment about the past. There is also an opportunity afforded the student to see that experience against the context of other events happening during the same period. The period covered by the archival material is a significant one in the history of our country, perhaps not more significant than other periods except that there would be a huge gap in historical continuity if it were left out or merely recorded through the eyes of detached observers. In this way the actors themselves tell their own story.
The University of Fort Hare seems singularly fitted to be the repository of this material because its chequered history is in itself a mirror of the struggles of the oppressed people in this country. There is no way in which its centrality in the development of the ideals of freedoms can be ignored. Within the gates of this institution the illustrious leaders of this nation, notably Professor Z K Matthews, conceptualised the framework of a people's Charter of basic Freedoms and Entitlements, and the leaders of the Youth League debated and planned a programme by which those Freedoms and Entitlements would be realised. This community also because it shares that past can best reap advantage by having the materials becoming accessible to all schools and colleges in this area so that the archives do not merely become a dead past, but form part of the process of creative learning. Quite apart from the suitability of this institution to house the archives and the value of original documentation in facilitating the work of the historian comsumer of knowledge, there is another point we wish to make, whish is that, if there is validity in the assumption that learning and the curriculum consist of a selection from the culture and a re-ordering of that experience, then the archival material will enable that process of selection to be made from authentic and real experiences of the past.
O R Tambo
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Last updated 18 September 1998