Archives and Struggle: Reflections on the Making of the Mayibuye Center and the Robben Island Museum 

Abstract:
Archives and heritage institutions were actively involved in political and social transformation processes at the end of apartheid in South Africa. In the early 1990s, many of these institutions initiated, participated in and experienced profound and radical changes, urged by the scrapping of apartheid laws from the statute books after a decades-long anti-apartheid struggle against a repressive and brutal apartheid state. Amongst many other developments, the period from the early to mid-1990s saw the release of political prisoners, the return of political exiles, and the lifting of apartheid censorship laws. Formerly banned materials — which included documents, books, posters, photographs, recordings and minutes of political meetings, and struggle ephemera — surfaced from across South Africa, to be placed in heritage and archival institutions set up to "restore aspects of South African history and culture which had been neglected [in official archives and narratives] in the past." Materials that were previously kept and used in international anti-apartheid campaigns across the world, by organizations such as the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid and the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, and many others, were repatriated; lived experience and memory were also deeply honored through the recording and archiving of oral histories. The making of the new South African constitution was one important framing for these processes. Within this context — over three decades ago — arose the Mayibuye Center for History and Culture in South Africa (1991 – 2000) and the Robben Island Museum (2000 - ), democratic South Africa's first national, public heritage institution.

In this dialogue, André Odendaal, the founding director of the Mayibuye Center and the Robben Island Museum, and Anthea Josias, UMSI lecturer and former archives and collections manager in these institutions, will reflect on these early processes of archives, memory and heritage work in South Africa, connecting this work with endeavors to promote the sustainability and ongoing activation of liberation struggle archives.

Speaker bios:

André Odendaal is the vice-chancellor’s writer-in-residence and an honorary professor in history and heritage studies at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). He received his first degrees from Stellenbosch University and his PhD from Cambridge University. Thereafter, he spent 13 years at the University of the Western Cape, where he started and directed the pioneering Mayibuye Center for History and Culture in South Africa, with its large multi-media archive on apartheid and the liberation struggle. Here he launched the Mayibuye History and Literature Series and, as joint series editor, oversaw the publication of 85 books on South African history (including the re-issuing of many titles of the previously banned International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa). From 1996 to 2002, after the closure of the notorious Robben Island Maximum Security Prison, he served as the first (administrator and) founding director of the Robben Island Museum, democratic South Africa’s first national heritage institution and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He is a co-author and co-editor of the book Robben Island Rainbow Dreams (BestRed, 2021), which addresses these processes.

Odendaal's most recent book, Dear Comrade President, in which he addresses the making of the new South African Constitution, has been shortlisted for the 2023 Sunday Times Literary Award for Non-Fiction, South Africa’s premier literary prize.

Anthea Josias, PhD, is a lecturer at the University of Michigan School of Information, where she teaches courses in preservation, program assessment and data science. Formerly, she was the archives and collections manager at the Mayibuye Center and the Robben Island Museum.