Research Notes: Negotiating South African ministerial archives (Defence & Foreign Affairs)

ABSTRACT

This Research Note provides background information on how to access records held by South Africa’s Department of Defence and Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO). Both repositories in Pretoria, the nation’s executive capital, hold considerable documentation of interest to scholars of the Cold War. The Note outlines the locations of the two facilities, working conditions, and policies that govern the release of their materials.

KEYWORDS:

• Military records
• diplomatic records
• documentation
• sources
• fieldwork

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Ronel Jansen van Vuuren to author, October 25, 2021.

² Sue Onslow, ‘Republic of South Africa Archives’, Cold War History 5, no. 3 (2005): 369–75.

³ Jamie Miller, An African Volk: The Apartheid Regime and Its Search for Survival (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 340.