BritishInstituteinEasternAfrica

ReportontheLusakaworkshop

EndangeredandPost-ColonialArchivesinEasternandSouthernAfrica

13-14October2016

co-organisedbyBritishInstituteinEasternAfrica(BIEA)

&SouthernAfricanInstituteforPolicyandResearch(SAIPAR)

withgeneroussupportfromJournalofSouthernAfricanStudies(JSAS)

ReviewofAfricanPoliticalEconomy(ROAPE)

HostedbytheFaithandEncounterCentre(FENZA),Lusaka,Zambia.

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On the 13th and 14th of October scholars and archivists working in and on AfricacametogetherinLusaka,Zambia,foraworkshoponthethemeof“EndangeredandPost-Colonial Archives in Eastern and Southern Africa.” The workshop was co-organisedbytheSouthernAfricanInstituteforPolicyandResearch(SAIPAR)andtheBritish Institute in EasternAfrica (BIEA), and part-fundedby theReviewof AfricanPolitical Economy (ROAPE) and the Journal of Southern African Studies (JSAS).Wehad two broad aims: to explore the challenges and realities of preserving“endangered” material in Eastern and Southern Africa, and to plan and discusspracticalstepsthatcouldbetakennowandforthefuturetopreserveandpromoteendangeredhistoricalmaterial in the region. Itwas fitting thatour venuewas theFaith and Encounter Centre, Zambia (FENZA), which had been founded (bymissionary and historian Hugo Hinfelaar in 2007) for the purpose of housing andpreserving the endangered archive of the White Fathers Catholic mission.Participantsweremostgratefulfortheinformativetour(ondaytwo)ofthelibraryand archive that was led by FENZA librarian Charity Pule Musawa and veteranmissionaryFrRobertLavertu.

Weinterpretedtheterms“endangered”and“post-colonial”broadly.Arangeof factorsmight endanger an archive, from political turbulence, to environmentalfactors,tothemisplacingofafilebyanarchivalassistantwhoperhapshadlittleorno training. The United National Independence Party (Zambia) archive was“endangered”notonlybecauseitwasalmosthousedinaroomaboveatake-awaykitchen(wheretherewouldhavebeenariskoffire),itwasalso“endangered”bythepeopleor groupswhomightwish to seize, steal, ordestroy itspolitically sensitivecontents. If the archive of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (Kenya) was an“endangered” archive because it was locked away and neglected in the dusty,draughty,atticofachurchbell-tower,otherarchiveswereendangeredbecauseofthe volume of researchers thumbing the paper pages. Indeed, material held inNationalArchivestoocouldbe“endangered”:thedirectorsofthenationalarchivesofMalawi,Kenya,andZambiagaveusaninsighttohowtheyattempttopreserve,promoteanddigitisetheirarchivesinthefaceoffinancialandotherconstraints.

An archive could be “post-colonial” because it contains material from thepost-Independenceperiod.Inourfirstroundofdiscussionsitwasnotedthatitwasoftenthecasethatthismaterial, i.e.materialofrelativelyrecentorigin, ismoreatriskofgoingmissingornotbeingstoredappropriatelythantheoldermaterialfromthe colonial and pre-colonial periods. This raised the question: how to preservematerialwith a very recent origin, in particular documents that are “born digital”such as email correspondence? But the “post-colonial” might equally denote thesocial,economicandpolitical structures inwhich repositoriesofhistoricalmaterialareembedded.FromFrancesMwangiof theKenyaNationalArchives,weheardofthemanageddestructionofsensitivecolonialerafilesbytheBritishgovernmentandthe“migration”ofotherstothe“secret”ForeignOfficerepositoryatHanslopePark.We also discussed how structures produced and relationships forged during thecolonial period endure and how the post-colonial archives seeking to develop theskills of its staff or enhance its technological capacitiesmanage their engagement

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with fundingbodies anddonors, such as theBritish Library andUNESCO,manyofwhomarebasedinformercolonialmetropoles.Afteropeningwithan introductorypresentationbyco-organiserJessicaAchberger,dayonewasdedicated to “the archivists.” Eachpursued their own specific themebut their talks also provided a picture of the state of archives in their respectivecountries. We heard from Rudo Karadzandima, from the National Archives ofZimbabwe; Paul Lihoma the Director of the National Archives of Malawi; ClaverIrakoze, from the Genocide Archive of Rwanda; ChilesheMusukuma and BonifaceSiambusu,theDirectoroftheNationalArchivesofZambia;andFrancisMwangi,theDirectoroftheNationalArchivesofKenya.

RudoKaradzandima,NationalArchivesofZimbabwe.

Ingiahedi Mduma, from the Tanzania Ministry of Information, Culture and Sportspresented on government policy on archives in Tanzania and Liah Yecalo-Tecle, agraduate internat theBritish Institute inEasternAfrica, reportedon theResearchandDocumentationCentre inAsamara, the“de facto”nationalarchivesofEritrea.Generalpointsthatemergedwereasfollows:

Physical buildings and storage conditions matter greatly when it comes toprotectingarchivematerial.Indeed,the1965ActofParliamentthatestablishedtheKenyaNationalarchivesandDocumentationService,FrancesMwangi informedus,gave it responsibility “for proper housing, control and preservation of all publicrecordsandpublicarchives.”AmongthemanythreatsposedtoarchivalmaterialinEasternandSouthernAfricaareenvironmentalandclimaticfactors:heat,dust,anddampness can result in the destruction of important material. The challenge toensure that materials are held in adequate storage spaces with controlledtemperaturesandhumidityisparticularlypronouncedifbudgetsarelimited.ClaverIrakoze showed the enormity of this challenge: 63 million pages of material wasproduced by the Gacaca courts alone in the aftermath of the genocide and theGenocideofRwandaArchiveisnowresponsiblefortheirstorageandpreservation.

Digitisation is a technique of preservation as much as a mode ofdissemination.Butoncedigitised,archivesareputunderpressure–oftenbyforeign

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researchers – to make documents available online. We discussed the practicalchallenges facing archives in the era of digitisation: If a national archive wouldnormally be accessible to approved researchers for a fee, should it not also bedigitised and made available online? But how would researchers be approvedthroughanonlinesystem?Andhowwouldanonlinesystembeabletodifferentiatebetweencitizensandnon-citizens? “Outside”expertiseand foreign fundingbodies(suchastheEU,UNESCOandtheBritishLibrary)oftenendupplayingacrucialbut,asMarjaHinfelaarpointedout,notunproblematic,roleincollecting,preserving,anddigitisingarchivalmaterial.

Archivesarenotonlyconcernedwithpaperdocumentsandtherearespecificchallengesthatfacethecollectionandpreservationoforalhistoriesandvisualandaudiosources.Over4,000recordedinterviewsareheldintheoralhistorycollectionat the National Archives of Zimbabwe, and nearly 2,500 of these have beenproduced since 2003 as part of a rangeof projects led by theNational Archive to“capture a fading memory” (to borrow the title of one). The Research andDocumentationCentreinEritreahas8,000audio-cassettesoforalhistoriesthatdatebacktotheearly1970s.22,000imagesandfilmshavebeendigitisedbytheMalawiNationalArchives.Inadditiontothe379originaltestimonies,theGenocideArchiveof Rwanda has produced 43 filmed interviews and 32 short documentary films.Collecting and preserving this material requires specific technologies and skills,whichneedtobeconstantlyupdated.

Actsof“intentionaldestruction”canendangerarchivalmaterial.Archivescanbetargetedduringtimesofwar,violence,andpoliticalturbulence.Wegotastrongsenseofthepoliticsofarchives,especiallyfromClaverIrakozeandFrancesMwangiwho showedhowduring the RwandanGenocide and the British decolonization ofKenya respectively, politically sensitive documents were stolen or destroyed.ChilesheMusukumaandBonifaceSiambusu informedus that in recentweeks, thephysical archive of the political party, the United National Independence Party(Zambia) (digitized by Giacomo Macola and Marja Hinfelaar in 2007) hasmysteriously closed down and beenmoved to an unknown location. TheNationalArchiveofMalawi has supportedprojects to identify andpreserve the archives ofpolitical parties and organisations but, as Brian Raftopolous pointed out, state orgovernment involvement in helping with the archives of political parties can bedeeplyproblematic.Meanwhile,JoostFontein,challengedthenotionthatarchivingshouldbeequatedwith“culturalheritage.”

Themorningsessionoftheseconddayconsistedofpresentationsfrom“thehistorians.” InthefirstpanelweheardfromTomCunningham(PhDstudentattheCentre of African Studies University of Edinburgh) on his and Thomas Molony’srecent British Library-funded “endangered archives project” at the archive of thePresbyterianChurchofEastAfrica inNairobi;MarjaHinfelaar(DirectorofResearchandProgramsatSAIPAR)onpost-colonialarchives inZambia;andGeraldChikozhoMazarire(MidlandsStateUniversity)onthe“AlukaStrugglesforFreedom”project.

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TomMolony,UniversityofEdinburgh.

ThepreservationprojectsdescribedbyTom,Marja,andGeraldalloperated

ondifferentscales(thesmallchurcharchive,thenationalarchive,thecreationofatransnational online archive) but each of the papers touched on the theme of“HistoriansasArchivists”(toborrowMarja’stitle).Inthediscussionwenotedhow,in post-colonial Africa, often it is the private research interests of individualhistorians that leadstoanarchivebeing identified,preservedordigitised.Thiscanlead to the creation of digital archives that reflect the research interests of oneindividual.Italsoraisesthebroaderquestion:whohastherightandresponsibilitytopreserve and promote particular ‘endangered archives’ – historians, universities,governments?Meanwhile, the ‘Aluka:Struggles forFreedom’project (whichsawahuge volume of material from across Southern Africa digitised and then madeavailableonline, through Jstor.org)providedamplematerial for awiderdiscussionabouttheethicsofaccessinganddisseminatingarchivematerialonline.

GeraldMazarire,MidlandStateUniversity,Zimbabwe.

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Thiswasfollowedbyaseriesofpresentationsfrompost-doctoralresearchers

and PhD students from the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein. First, we“navigatedtheSouthAfricaNationalArchive”withCorneliusMuller.ThenMirandaSimabwachispokeaboutpreservationpracticesinZambia.DuncanMoneydiscussedtransnational history and the practical and theoretical issues that surround theAfricanhistorian’suseofarchivesthataredispersedacrosstheglobe.GeorgeBishidrewonhisownexperience(asaformerarchiveassistantattheNationalArchivesofZimbabwe) toprovideanaccountof theday-to-dayprocessesof thearchive fromthepointofviewofresearcherandarchivist.Finally,HydenMunenedescribedthefour Zambian archives he consulted when researching twentieth-century mininghistory.

These papers primarily concerned historians’ encounters with archives, atopiconwhichthereisagrowingbodyofcriticalliterature(forexample,AntoinetteBurton (ed.)Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions and theWriting ofHistory (2006)).Weheard,forexample,abouttheidiosyncrasiesofparticulararchives,aboutuniqueortemperamental computer-search systems, unorthodox catalogues, and strangeclassification systems. The question of access returned: we discussed the widevariety of rules in operation for accessing particular archives (fees, institutionaffiliations, waiting times, the question of the researcher’s nationality); and weheard about how research into one country’s past (in this case Zambia’s), mightrequire travelling not only to Lusaka but also locations as disparate as Oxford’sBodleianLibrary,Amsterdam’sInstituteofSocialHistory,andtheAmericanHeritageCenterinWyoming.Itwasdifficulttoavoidthefactthateven(orparticularly)intheage of digital scholarship and global research, the question of uneven access toarchivesduetounevenresearchbudgetswillnotgoaway. Ourconcludingroundtablediscussionfocussedonpracticalnextstepsinlightofthepresentations.Fouritemswereprominent.First,wediscussedthepossibilityofproducingacrowd-sourceddatabaseorwebsitethatwouldstoreanddisseminateinformation about archives in (Southern and Eastern) Africa. The site would be aresource for researchers to identifyarchivesand findsuchpractical informationaslocation,openinghours,keypointsofcontact.Second,wediscussedthepossibilityofproducinga“Best(orBetter)Practice”manualorguideforthedigitalpreservationof endangered archives. Third, we discussed the possibility of future publicationsbasedonthepresentationsanddiscussionsintheworkshop.Fourthandfinally,wediscussedconsolidatingthecommunityforgedduringourtwodaysandconnectingwith already-existing networks. In particular we noted the potentially fruitfulconnectionwith Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Branch of the InternationalCouncilofArchives(ESARBICA)andthepossibilityofenteringapanelfortheAfricanStudiesAssociationofAfrica(ASAA)attheirnextconferenceinOctober2017.

ReportbyTomCunninghamandLiahYecalo-Tecle

4/11/2016

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Conferencedinner,14thOctober2016.