At the time of apartheid in South Africa, to bypass control of the racist state on the archives, activists in exile launch Saha, a collection of militant archives of daily life: pamphlets, posters of meetings, T-shirt of anti-apartheid parties … today installed at the University of Wits, in Johannesburg, they represent a precious treasure to understand the daily struggle everyday hero, and not only through famous people such as Nelson Mandela.
Of our correspondent to Johannesburg,
This treasure is in the basement of the library. After a small dark staircase, there is a metal door, the sound of air conditioning, then large archive paths. “” Saha was created in the late 1980s by anti-apartheid activists in exile to protect their documents, to shelter them from the apartheid diet “Says Arianna Lissoni History professor, specialist in anti-apartheid struggle and director of Saha archives.
« We have several collections of photographs, more than 4,000 posters, stickers, pins. We also have a very large collection of wrestling t-shirts. They are all in these boxes you see there. There we have T-shirts from the Communist Partysérum Arianna Lissoni. In this other box, it is a t-shirt with the face of Matthew Goniwe, an activist murdered by the diet. It was surely for his funeral because it is written “Hamba Kahle, Comrade”, which means “goodbye comrade”, in Zulu ».
These witnesses of the past are unique. Like this cassette placed in a large drawer: a precious recording that tells of daily life under apartheid. “” It is an interview with Vesta Smith, a woman from a Métisse from Soweto. And as far as I know, there is no other recording of it! », Enthuses the historian.
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Now the challenge is to make these figures known sometimes forgotten to tell everyday life. Of a collection of activists in exile at the start, Saha has now become a real vector of education in South Africa. « Here you have the wall of our publications. There, it is “to enter Tembisa”, because people know Soweto or Alexandra, but that the history of the Township of Tembisa was not really documented, soulig arianna lissoni. There was therefore this project, in partnership with a photographer, historians and members of the community, to tell this little -known story ».
A desire to educate that sometimes comes up against the lack of means. If Saha strives to launch new projects to make these archives even more accessible, using digital for example. Often, financial aid, especially from the state, are missing.
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