Historical Documents Related to Apartheid Available to All

Since I had a late departure flight from South Africa home on Monday, I decided to try to take advantage of the extra time by visiting the Historical Documents Collection of the William Cullen Library of the University of Witswatersrand outside of Johannesburg. While the collection is scant on documents related to the state position on Apartheid, as these are housed at the National Archives of South Africa, the collection is a goldmine in terms of primary source materials from the anti-Apartheid perspective. While I remain an avid supporter of using the Holocaust as a platform by which to teach global human rights issues, in part due to the widespread availability of documentation left by the perpetrators of evil themselves, it is important to note that almost an equal amount of primary source material is available on Apartheid-era South Africa.

Indeed, Ms. Pickover, the Director/Head Librarian at the Collection often finds herself assisting international researchers as they pick their way through the collections. Yet, at the same time, foreign K-12 educators do not seem to avail themselves of these materials with equal interest. While not completely analogous, would it not be wise to offer American high school students a course in comparative human/civil rights issues by looking at the American Civil Rights Movement, the movement to end Apartheid in South Africa, the Holocaust, Darfur, etc.? In this way, the focus would be on what unites humankind rather than what makes various subgroups different and/or subject to ridicule.

Although I had thought that I had ample time to review the collections, my five hours at the center went rather quickly. Therefore, I needed the assistance of Ms. Pickover and her staff to help me to concentrate my efforts on key documents/aspects of the struggle to end Apartheid. As such, it is these documents that I have brought back to the United States and hope to use with my students in developing global human rights awareness.

I found some extremely interesting gems in terms of primary source documentation. The Center, for instance, has an original published copy of the 1955 Freedom Charter. You may recall that this was one of the first unified attempts, on the part of democratic alliances, to get the National Party led government to fall back on segregationist policies. You may also recall that most signatories to the Freedom Charter, the likes of Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo (believed to have written the Charter), Ruth First, Helen Joseph, Walter Sisulu, etc, were brought up on treason charges during the treason trials of the 50s/60s. The Center maintains the court records from some of these trials as well as the court decisions that all found that there was not a definitive link to the passages within the Freedom Charter and an overt call for the overthrow of the Apartheid government. Again, however, this did not end the government's attempts to rearrest anti-Apartheid supporters on other charges and, as such, many supporters of democracy were forced into exile, yet others indeed were imprisoned on other charges, and or assassinated domestically and/or overseas (Ruth First) by the South African secret police.

The Center also maintains priceless documents related to Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress (ANC), and the court records from the trial that ultimately led to what would have been Mandela's lifelong sentence in prison had it not been for the outcry against Apartheid that could not, ultimately, be silenced. After the treason trials, Mandela continued to support and co-lead the ANC, but clandestinely, on a farm in rural Rivonia. Mandela was acting as the farm gardener. Ultimately discovered and raided by the South African police in the early 1960s, most of the defendents arrested on the farm, including Mandela, were indeed convicted on treason charges and sentenced to decades in prison. The Center maintains Mandela's personal notes for his lawyers, his notes on why he did not accept the court's right to charge him on charges of treason, as well as his final statement if, indeed, the courts had sentenced him to death. Although, under Apartheid, treason could result in a death sentence in South Africa, currently, there is no death penalty.

The Center also maintains the personal edits of human/womens rights advocates such as Helen Joseph, whom I believe is only one of a few white people - along with Joe Slovo - to have been buried in Soweto, as well as the correspondence of human rights advocate Ms. Susman while she served in the South African parliament. As such, one can truly get a sense of the personal impact of Apartheid on the lives of ordinary South Africans as they read the original letters to Ms. Susman, from the 1970s - 1990, and her responses, on issues ranging from forced removals and/or detentions. Included in the Susman collection, one can also find reports filed by the Congresswoman as she visited townships and/or informal settlements. Recently, the South African Jewish Museum had an exhibit on this fascinating freedom fighter.

The last documents which I had time to review included those related to the 1980s Delmas trial. In this trial, the Apartheid era government tried to assert that certain members of the United Democratic Front (UDF) - a coalition of Anti-Apartheid organizations - had not only ties to Communism but that it actively was attempting to incite revolution in townships, across the nation, like that of Soweto. In these research boxes, one can see stacks of witness testimony supporting the defendents, as well as "evidence" provided by the state witness on matters related to Communism, and individual factfinding reports on UDF activity in various cities across the country. Ultimately, the accused were found guilty. However, this trial, as well as events such as the 1976 Soweto Uprising against Afrikaans instruction in schools and the government reaction to this uprising, would continue to place increasing international pressure on the South African government to relax its discriminatory policies.

As for the criteria which determined to which " race" one belonged - i.e. white, other white, honorary white (Japanese), Asian, colored, black, Indian etc. etc., I am still confused but know that, at times, the classification was influenced by economics as in the case of the Japanese, noted as white, as opposed to Chinese, noted as Asian. Religion also played a part if Hindu and/or Muslim. As an aside, today, South Africa has a healthy trade arrangement with China. It was also not uncommon for certain family members to be classified as white and others as colored, etc. and, with the group areas resettlement act, this resulted in the breakup of families. Several individuals also told me about the "pencil/pen test" where one was considered white if the pen fell out of the hair but of color if the pen remained.