Towards an archival collecting plan for the records generated by the Portuguese community-based organizations in the Gauteng Province of South Africa

Abstract

Certain communities are under-represented in South Africa's archival collections, such as the South African Portuguese community. This article presents the results of research which aimed to investigate how to bring the contemporary history of this group into the country's archival heritage. As South Africa has a number of Portuguese community-based organizations, and as the records created by the latter are deemed an important source in safeguarding the social history of an under-documented group, this study sought to determine possible strategies for collecting and preserving these records. The study revealed that these organizations create and hold diverse types of records that may show important aspects of the community's history and cultural life. It became evident that the record-keeping practices of these organizations were performed inadequately, with records being misplaced or simply discarded after their administrative use had expired. Although these organizations had never thought of establishing an archival programme for themselves or depositing their records in any archives, they were willing to contribute their records to a planned archival collecting initiative of the community. Recommendations were made with regards to these organizational records so as to improve their management and to facilitate their potential inclusion in an archival collecting plan for the community.

Keywords::

• under-documented communities
• community archiving
• immigrant archives
• South African Portuguese community

Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude for those individuals who participated as interviewees from the selected South African Portuguese community-based organizations in Gauteng, and the mainstream universities in Gauteng.

Notes

^1.Statistics South Africa, Census 2011.

^2.Leal, “Breve Historia dos Portugueses na Africa do Sul,” 1.

^3.Glaser, Portuguese Immigrant History in Twentieth Century South Africa.

^4.Leal, “Breve Historia dos Portugueses na Africa do Sul,” 41.

^5.Glaser, Portuguese Immigrant History in Twentieth Century South Africa.

^6. Ibid.

^7.Webb, Home Across the Atlantic.

^8.Pina, Portugueses na Africa do Sul.

^9.Ferreira, Emigracao Portuguesa para Africa.

^10.Glaser, Portuguese Immigrant History in Twentieth Century South Africa, 62.

^11.Harris, The Archival Sliver.

^12.Mc Ewan, Building a Post-colonial Archive?

^13.Glaser, Portuguese Immigrant History in Twentieth Century South Africa.

^14.Josias, Archives as Feature of Collective Memory.

^15.Lu, “Potential for Acquisition of Ethnic Archives.”

^16.Flinn, Archival Activism.

^17.Mulwa, “Efficacy of Participatory Strategic Planning Approaches to Organisation Building,” 202.

^18.Flinn, Community Histories, Community Archives, 153.

^19.McDonald, “Out of the Hollinger Box and into the Streets,” 3.

^20.Flinn, Community Histories, Community Archives, 155.

^21.Lu, “Potential for Acquisition of Ethnic Archives,” 7–10.

^22.McDonald, “Out of Hollinger Box and into Street,” 10–11.

^23.Light and Hyry, Colophons and Annotations, 217.

^24.Cook, Fashionable Nonsense or Professional Rebirth, 15.

^25.Daniel, Immigrant and Ethnic Experience in American Archives, 92.

^26.Stearns, “The New Social History,” 4.

^27.Mayer, The New Social History, 391.

^28.Van Wingen and Bass, Archival Practice in Light of the New Social History, 580.

^29.Field, The Centre for Popular Memory.

^30.Harris, Jacques Derrida Meets Nelson Mandela.

^31. National Archives and Records Service of South Africa Act, 43 of 1996.

^32.The National Archives and Records Service of South Africa.

^33.Harris, “Exploring archives,” 7.

^34.Harris, The Archival Sliver, 75–76.

^35.Hamilton et al., “Refiguring the Archives.”

^36.McEwan, Building a Post-colonial Archive?

^37.Josias, Archives as a Feature of Collective Memory.

^38.Stevens et al., The Apartheid Archive.

^39.Lu, “Potential for Acquisition of Ethnic Archives.”

^40.Wheaton, “Donors, Users, Archival Repositories.”

^41.Church, “Documenting African American Community Heritage.”

^42.Flinn, Independent Community Archives and Community Generated Content.

^43.Singer, “Value of Community-based Ethnic Archives.”

^44.Flinn, Community Histories, Community Archives.

^45.Van Wingen and Bass, “Archival Practices in Light of New Social History.”

^46.Newman, Sustaining Community Archives, 98.

^47.Samuels, “Who Controls the Past.”

^48.Newman, Sustaining Community Archives, 99.

^49.Flinn, “Archival Activism.”

^50.Lu, “Potential for Acquisition of Ethnic Archives.”

^51.Newman, Sustaining Community Archives.

^52.McDonald, “Out of the Hollinger Box and into the Streets,” 62.

^53.Wurl, Ethnicity as Provenance.

^54. Ibid.

^55.Jimerson, Embracing the Power of Archives.

^56.Lu, “Potential for Acquisition of Ethnic Archives.”

^57.Bastian, Taking Custody, Giving Access.

^58.Jimerson, Embracing the Power of Archives.

^59.Wurl, Ethnicity as Provenance.

^60.Flinn, Independent Community Archives and Community Generated Content.

^61.Bastian, “Taking Custody, Giving Access.”

^62.McDonald, “Out of the Hollinger Box and into the Streets.”

^63.Flinn, Independent Community Archives and Community Generated Content.

^64.Neal, Cultivating Diversity.

^65.Flinn et al., Whose Memories, Whose Archives?

^66.McDonald, “Out of the Hollinger Box and into the Streets.”

^67.Flinn, Independent Community Archives and Community Generated Content.

^68.Flinn, Archival Activism, 7–8.

^69. Ibid. 8.

^70.Newman, Sustaining Community Archives, 89–97.

^71.Flinn, Independent Community Archives and Community Generated Content.

^72.Thorman, “Use of Web 2.0 Technologies in Archives,” 2.

^73.Newman, Sustaining Community Archives, 95.

^74.Church, “Documenting African American Community Heritage,” 176.

^75.South Africa, “National Archives and Records Service of South Africa.”

^76.Lu, “Potential for Acquisition of Ethnic Archives.”

^77.McDonald, “Out of the Hollinger Box and into the Streets.”

^78.Flinn, “Independent Community Archives and Community Generated Content.

^79.Harris, The Archival Sliver, 80.

^80. Ibid., 85–86.