Past and current Public History projects
The underground in liberation struggles in Africa
The aim of this project, funded through a catalytic grant by the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, is to interrogate the idea and practices of the underground (or clandestine forms of political struggle) in different parts of the African continent in the course of two workshops bringing together scholars and postgraduate students from South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, Namibia, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, and Kenya over a two year period. Through a comparative approach, the project seeks to contribute to new understandings of the underground and more generally of African liberation struggles from the 1950s to the present. Three principal outcomes are envisioned: laying the foundation for substantive collaboration between African scholars, training of postgraduate students and the publication of an edited volume.
History of Non-Racial Sports in Gauteng
The History Workshop has been working with former athletes and sports organisations in Gauteng on the history of non-racial sports in a number of sports codes including tennis, football, cricket, volleyball, and rugby among others. The project has been made possible by a grant from the Foundation for Human Rights. One of the key aims of the project has been the collection of oral histories of athletes, administrators and supporters in areas such as Fietas, Sophiatown, Albertville and Doornfontein to document their involvement in non-racial sports. Although these communities were destroyed by apartheid’s forced removals, their continued participation in non-racial sports as a means of resistance is being captured in these oral testimonies. From these narratives, a hidden, unrecorded part of South African history has been uncovered.
Dobsonville
This project is a community initiative by Dobsonville residents. Dobsonville is an important yet understudied suburb of Soweto. Its roots lie in Roodepoort’s ‘old location’, which was gradually destroyed by the apartheid government through forced removals between 1955 and 1967. Nevertheless, the links between the old location and Dobsonville remained strong and emotive, for example through sites such as the cemetery in Roodepoort West.
Naidoo Family History
Initiated by the Naidoo/Pillay family in 2013, and co-ordinated by Ilse Wilson (nee Fischer) the project’s main aims is to produce a biography, archive and exhibition about this important political family. The family history of Thambi Naidoo spans more than a hundred years, starting in 1889, when Thambi arrived in 1889 from Mauritius, where his parents had migrated from India. Since then, its members have been fighting for a free and just South Africa, maintaining a consistent culture of service. The Apartheid Museum is currently in the process of co-curating (with the family) an exhibition, for which funding has been secured from the Foundation for Human Rights.
South African Democratic Teachers’ Union
In 2013, SADTU commissioned the History Workshop to undertake research on the history of the union. 185 life history interviews were conducted across the country. Several personal collections have been donated by union members, which will form part of the union’s official archive located at Wits Historical Papers.
Bell Dewar Hall
In 2015 the law firm Bell Dewar Hall approached the History Workshop to help them collect an oral and documentary archive of its history. The firm, founded in 1897, has represented major South African newspapers for the last century, advising and assisting journalists publishing under apartheid censorship laws. It also acted for the Aggett family in the inquest into Neil Aggett’s death, and represented Bram Fischer at his trial before he went underground.
Matthews Phosa Biography
In 2011, Matthews Phosa approached Phil Bonner to write his authorised biography. Since then more than 50 life history interviews have been conducted with Phosa, some of his relatives, political activists and members of the provincial government during his tenure as premier of Mpumalanga.
The ANC underground in Mpumalanga
From the late 1970s, what is today the province of Mpumalanga, particularly the lowveld region, became a key site of operation for ANC underground operatives with connections with MK structures in Swaziland and Mozambique. Their responsibilities included recruiting members for MK, infiltrating weapons and banned materials and harbouring MK cadres. Over 50 life history interviews have been conducted by Tshepo Moloi and Philip Bonner with MK veterans and former underground operatives, including former SAP members linked to Vlakplaas.
Bantustans and provincial focus
Researchers and postgraduate students linked to the Workshop have initiated a sustained scholarly interest in South Africa’s former bantustans. Since the NRF Chair’s inception in 2007, the group has been re-examining and unearthing the histories of these largely forgotten ‘rural backwaters,’ often focusing on the politics of chiefly rule, ethnicity, and the liberation struggle. This interest carried over to collaborative projects with the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI), where questions of bureaucracy and post-apartheid provincial organisation reoriented the research agenda toward an historical understanding of institutional practices in the public sector.
Vincent Tshabalala
Vincent Tshabalala was the chairman of Alexandra’s COSAS branch and played an instrumental role in the student and youth politics in the township. He was also passionate about education and helped establish Saturday classes for high school learners in the township. In mid-1983 he left the country to join MK, and on 9 February 1985 died in a shootout with the police in Alexandra. The project will produce an exhibition and a popular book based on life history interviews and unpublished photographs of Tshabalala.
Samora Machel Documentary Centre (Maputo)
At the end of 2014 Graca and Josina Machel (representing the Graca Machel Foundation) approached the History Workshop and Historical Papers at the university to assist in the resuscitation and development of the Samora Machel Documentary Centre CDSM in Maputo in collaboration with researchers, archivists and institutions in Mocambique.
Robert Sobukwe Trust
The collaboration with the Trust is aimed at recording the history of Sobukwe in relation to Graaff-Reinet, his birthplace, mainly through the collection of oral testimonies.
Social Cohesion Project
This project is being funded by the NRF and is a joint collaboration with the Public Affairs Research Institute. It started off with a focus on the social dynamics of new residential areas – particularly townhouse complexes and gated communities - in the West Rand. Over the last few years this has expanded to other areas including towns in the Free State, North West and Limpopo, as well as informal settlements that have grown on Johannesburg’s outskirts. The project has generated considerable new research on themes that include trajectories of class formation (with particular reference to the emergence of a new black middle class), the role of various institutions (both formal and informal) as drivers of economic and social change, identity formation, histories of secondary towns, changing patterns of migrancy post-1994, and ethnographies of the local state and the public sector.
Safeguarding Democracy: Contests of Memory and Heritage (Switzerland-South Africa)
The focus of this project, which started in 2010, is a comparative study of the development of Swiss and South African democratic practice and culture. Several comparative research studies (Mazembo Mavungu on boundary disputes; Sheila Meintjes on minority marginalisation; Cynthia Kros on official enquires into past abuses; Sekibakiba Lekgoathi on community radio stations; and Ursula Scheidegger on gender and populist politics), staff and student exchanges and workshops have been part of the collaboration. In 2014 the second phase of the programme was initiated on the theme: ‘Safeguarding Democracy: Contests of Values and Interests’. This has developed into two interrelated focal areas: ‘Social Movements, Migration and the Media’ (coordinated by Noor Nieftagodien and Elisio Macamo) and ‘Women’s Human Rights and Gender-Based Violence’ (coordinated by Sheila Meintjes and Doris Wastl-Walter).
Detainee Parents’ Support Committee
The DPSC is an organisation that became part of what came to be known as the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) in the 1980s. The History Workshop is part of the reference group that has commissioned a history of the DPSC.
Vilakazi Street Oral History Project
At the end of 2008 the History Workshop was approached to conduct an Oral History Project in Vilakazi Street (Soweto) in response to a request by the community. The project was commissioned by the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA). The main outcomes of this research were a popular history book (published by Wits Press in 2012), a documentary film and the creation of an oral and photographic archive that were handed over to the JDA. In 2009, a photo exhibition, curated by Sally Gaule, was launched at Uncle Tom’s in Orlando West.
Federation of South African Trade Unions (Fosatu)
In 2009, an exhibition - jointly organised by Historical Papers at Wits University, History Workshop, SWOP and Cosatu - was mounted to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the launch of Fosatu. The exhibition was accompanied by a panel discussion, chaired by Dennis Davies, with Chris Dlamini, Alec Erwin, Moses Mayekiso, Jane Barrett, Philip Bonner and Daniel Dube as speakers. A popular history book titled The Future is in the Hands of the Workers was published in 2011.
Alexandra
The History Workshop trained a team of young residents to help conduct research towards the writing of a book on the social and political history of Alexandra township, one of the oldest black townships in South Africa. The initiative was commissioned by the Alexandra Renewal Project (established by the City of Johannesburg), resulting in the publication of Alexandra: A History in 2008. A six part television series based on the book and directed by a team that included award winning director Rehad Desai (Miners Shot Down) was produced for the SABC in 2013.
The Road to Democracy in South Africa
The Road to Democracy in South Africa project was launched in March 2001 by then President Thabo Mbeki to write a history of the liberation movements from 1960 to 1996. Several members of the History Workshop have been involved as board members of the South African Democracy Education Trust which coordinates the project and as authors of chapters in several of the volumes it has produced.