Historical Background
At the end of 1964 a campaign was launched to establish a centre for the collection and preservation of political documents at the University of the Free State with a view to documenting South African political history since 1902.
The stimulation of contemporary historiography was new in South Africa. As a result, the Institute for Contemporary History came into existence towards the end of 1970. The institute consisted of three divisions:
- Documentation Division
- Press Cutting
- Research Division
In 1998 the Documentation Division became independent and is known as the Archive for Contemporary Affairs.
Objectives
The Archive is responsible for the collection, safekeeping, arrangement, and description of archivalia and for making it accessible to researchers.
At present the archive houses 957 private document collections, covering approximately 3 500m of shelving space. This includes collections from economists, politicians, churches, and cultural and community leaders.
The archive has a fully equipped Sound Archive at its disposal, for recording the memoirs of individuals. Hundreds of audio cassettes containing precious research material have already been processed and are available to researchers.
Over and above the collections of private documents and the sound archive material, the Archive has a comprehensive collection of newspapers and newspaper cuttings, official publications, a unique collection of pamphlets, thousands of photographs, press releases and speeches of Ministers.
Donation of Documents
The Archive is interested in correspondence, minutes, speeches, circulars, reports, memoranda, notes, diaries, pamphlets, photographs, and newspaper cuttings. In fact, we prefer to receive a donor's complete collection. If there are any documents which in our opinion do not belong in the Archive, they will be returned to the donor.
The donor also maintains control over the accessibility of the collection for research purposes. Confidential documents may be withdrawn from the collection for any period of time and instructions in this respect are painstakingly obeyed. A donor can also make additions to the collection at any time and as often as it suits him or her.
It must be emphasised that the Archive does not purchase any documents and that donors receive no financial compensation.
Contact Us
LD Mestile
mestileld@ufs.ac.za
+27 51 401 2418
Thabang Khanye
khanyett@ufs.ac.za
+27 51 401 2646
NTF Sentso
sentsontf@ufs.ac.za
+27 51 401 2225