Defending the right to access apartheid records
LHR and Open Secrets in Court Today defending the right to access apartheid records
Court order could bankrupt South African History Archive
Ra’eesa Pather | Mail & Guardian | 03 April 2018 | A high court judgement has left the South African History Archive (SAHA) reeling following a cost order which could put the organisation out of business. Protecting and preserving historical records, particularly those relating to the apartheid regime and activism against it, has been the…
Court Strikes a Blow Against Transparency
This is a statement by the South African History Archive (SAHA) The South African History Archive (SAHA) notes with great disappointment and alarm the decision that was handed down by the Johannesburg High Court on 19 March 2018 in the matter of the South African History Archive v South African Reserve Bank and another. Paradoxically, this…
United States Agencies Stick with Secrecy on Apartheid Crimes
Today the United States celebrates its “Freedom of Information Day”. It is supposed to provide an occasion to focus on issues of public access to information and transparency in the US government. Given the extensive capacity of United States agencies, particularly their intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the US possesses considerable information about the…
Press Release: SAHA goes to court to access apartheid-era records
For Immediate Release: Why, after more than two decades of democracy in South Africa, is the apartheid archive still kept under lock and key? Secrecy is a key ingredient in the abuse of power and its legacy needs to be challenged. For these reasons, SAHA is going to court on Friday the 4th of August 2017…
Free up information on our past, painful though it may be
A final, calculated act of vandalism by the apartheid state was the destruction of more than six-million pages of documents that had been generated by the state security agencies. Although an important part of our history went up in smoke above the steel furnaces outside Pretoria, a far greater volume of records remains largely untouched…