Decolonising the archives: languages as enablers and barriers to accessing public archives in South Africa

ABSTRACT

Under a democratic dispensation in South Africa, which recognises eleven official languages, language is still used to divide and segregate people and different cultures. The examples of how languages have divided South Africa from colonial times to the current dispensation are evident in archival collections housed by the country’s public archives services. A qualitative study was undertaken to identify all the languages of the different archival collections held by the public archives services in South Africa. Utilising a postmodernist ontology, this paper investigates the challenges pertaining to the large volumes of collections where access is restricted due to language barriers with limited assistance to provide translation services.

KEYWORDS:

• Languages
• decolonisation
• oral history
• linguistic challenges
• postmodernism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This article is an edited version of a paper that was presented at the ‘Designing the Archive Conference’ in Adelaide in October 2019. The article has been amended in consideration of comments and critique from delegates at the conference. The author’s attendance at the conference was made possible by funding from the University of South Africa.

2. Western Cape Government, ‘Provincial Archives Service. Provincial Archives Service: Overview’, 2018, available at <http://www.westerncape.gov.za/cape-archives>, accessed 20 March 2018.

3. Susan Gehr, ‘Breath of Life: Revitalizing California’s native languages through archives’, Master’s Thesis, School of Library and Information Science, San José University, 2013.

4. ibid.

5. ibid.

6. ibid.

7. Department of Arts and Culture, Western Cape Government and Oral History Association of South Africa, 15^th Annual National Oral History Conference, 2018.

8. Isabel Schellnack-Kelly and Veli Jiyane, ‘Tackling environmental issues in the digital age through oral histories and oral traditions from the iSimangaliso Wetland’, Historia, vol. 62, no. 2, November 2017, pp. 112–29, available at <http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2309-8392/2017/v62n2a6>, accessed 20 January 2019.

9. ibid.

10. Gwakisa A Kamatula, Nampombe Mnkeni-Saurombe and Olefhile Mosewu, ‘The role of archives in the promotion of documentary national heritage in Tanzania, South African and Bostwana’, Journal of the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Branch of the International Council of Archives, vol. 32, 2013, pp. 109–27.

11. ibid.

12. ibid.

13. Michel Foucault, Power: The Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954–1984, Penguin, London, 2019; Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1984; Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, translated by Ian Hamilton Grant, Sage, Los Angeles, 2016.

14. Terry Cook, ‘Archival Science and postmodernism: new formulations of old concepts’, Archival Science, vol. 1, no. 1, 2001, pp. 3–24; Terry Cook, ‘Fashionable nonsense or professional rebirth: postmodernism and the practice of archives’, Archivaria, vol. 51, 2001, pp. 14–35; Terry Cook, ‘The Archive(s) is a foreign country: historians, archivists and the changing archival landscape’, The American Archivist, vol. 74, no. 2, 2011, pp. 600–32; Eric Ketelaar, ‘Archives of the people, by the people, for the people’, South African Archives Journal, vol. 34, 1992, pp. 5–16; Verne Harris, Archives and Justice: a South African Perspective, Society of American Archivists, Chicago, 2007; Richard Cox, Archives and archivists in the Information Age, Neal-Schuman Publishers, New York, 2005; Tom Nesmith, ‘Still fuzzy, but more accurate: some thoughts on the “ghosts” of archival theory’, Archivaria, vol. 47, 1999, pp. 136–50; Jacques Derrida, Archives fever: a Freudian impression, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1996.

15. Margaret Hedstrom, ‘Archives, memory and interfaces with the past,’ Archival Science, vol. 2, no. 1–2, 2002, pp. 21–43.

16. Clive Kirkwood, ‘Records management in the public sector and the archival challenges posed by electronic records’, South African Archives Journal, vol. 36, 1994, p. 13.

17. Jacques Derrida, A Freudian Impression, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1996; Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016; Michael Foucault, The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse of language, Pantheon, New York, 1972.

18. Derrida, A Freudian Impression.

19. Mpho Ngoepe and Marica Nkwe, ‘Separating the wheat from the chaff with the winnowing fork: The eeny meeny miny mo appraisal approach of digital records in South Africa’, Records Management Journal, vol. 28, no. 2, 2018, pp. 130–42.

20. Kate Eichhorn, ‘Archival Genres: Gathering texts and reading spaces,’ Invisible culture, no. 12, 2008, pp. 1–10.

21. ibid., p. 3.

22. National Archives and Records Service of South Africa, ‘Introduction to collections,’ 2016, available at <http://www.nationalarchives.gov.za/node/490>, accessed 20 May 2020.

23. Western Cape Government, Western Cape Archives, General publication, 2020, available at <https://www.westerncape.gov.za/general-publication/provincial-archives-and-records-services?toc_page=5>, accessed 20 May 2020.

24. ibid.

25. National Archives and Records Service of South Africa.

26. ibid.

27. SALanguages.com, website dedicated to the languages of South Africa, 2019, available at <http://salanguages.com/>, accessed 20 March 2019.

28. Author’s interview with Sizwe Mbuyisa, Gauteng Provincial Archives, 2 October 2019.

29. Author’s visits to the National Archives and Records Service, September and December 2018.

30. Isabel Schellnack-Kelly, ‘The role of records management in governance-based evidence, service delivery and development in South African communities’, PhD Thesis, University of South Africa, 2013, p. 108.

31. ibid.

32. SALanguages.com.

33. Author’s interview with Brenda Kotze at National Film, Video and Sound Archives, 19 April 2018.

34. Sudatta Chowdhury, ‘Chapter 7 Cultural heritage information: users and usability’, in Ian Ruthven and Gobinda Chowdhury, Cultural Heritage Information: Access and Management, Facet Publishing, Croydon, 2015, pp. 135–51.

35. Simon Tanner and Marilyn Deegan, ‘Inspiring research, inspiring scholarship: the value and benefits of digitized resources for learning, teaching, research and enjoyment’, in JISC Digitization Programme Report, 2011.

36. Author’s interview with Brenda Kotze, 19 April 2018.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of South Africa [Research Funds].

Notes on contributors

Isabel S. Schellnack-Kelly

Isabel S. Schellnack-Kelly is a senior lecturer at the Department of Information Science at the University of South Africa. She is currently teaching modules related to archives and records management and supervises masters and doctoral studies. Isabel’s research interests are in oral history collections that consider collections of indigenous knowledge and collaborations with historians regarding the accessibility of archival collections.