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Issues of Archiving inSouthern Africa
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Archiving is
an important activity because it provides storage and retrieval of
information
necessary for
effective decision making and the continued existence of organisations
including
communities
and whole societies. It also has a psychological function in maintaining
those parts
of collective
memory which are the basis of identity which is necessary for health and
survival..
The ethics of
ownership of archival material are the same as for any other intellectual
and
cultural
property, and there are remedies provided by international treaty and law. A
debate is
often
formulated in terms of rightful but neglectful ownership versus acquired
benevolent
custodial
ownership with possibly colonial origin. Electronic archiving technology may
appear to
provide an
answer through virtual ownership but in view of the psychological
significance of the
collective
record this is highly unlikely. However, in other ways, electronic archives
have a
valuable role
to play. Some of the key holdings in Southern Africa and present initiatives
are
briefly
reviewed and the psychological importance of archiving language records,
both oral and
written, is
affirmed.
"Stories can
heal profound sicknesses of the spirit." (Okri, 1998: 115)
Introduction
Archive is
from the Greek arkhé meaning government, indicating its
importance in the continued
life of a
community. Archives, or organised public or corporate records, are essential
to effective
day-to-day
organisational decision making, but even more than that, to the survival of
organisations.
Schwirtlich has argued that
"Just as
individuals dysfunction without a memory so do organisations. Without
archival recall they
would have no
perspective on which to base planning, nothing to prevent them repeating
mistakes,
no expertise or
knowledge except what people remembered, perhaps inaccurately, no way of
proving
entitlements or ownership or of accounting for their actions." (1987: 6).
Archives were
well developed by the ancient Chinese, the ancient Greeks and many other
peoples
including the
Aboriginal Australians, whose immensely intricate archives were stored and
transmitted
orally but with reference markers in the physical landscape. Rock art was
also used in
Southern Africa
which has more sites than in any other part of the world (Unisa, 2001), and
the
National
Archives of South Africa acknowledges rock art, heraldic shield markings and
oral history
as constituting
archival records (National Archives of South Africa, 2001: 3). Colonising
powers
developed
extensive archives and the evaluation and interpretation of these is a major
challenge to
the present day
archivist.
*
Senior Lecturer
in Government, University of Tasmania. I would like to thank for their
information
and advice the
many helpful people I met during my two visits to South Africa and one to
Zimbabwe.
2
Archival
Initiatives in Southern Africa: Overview
The states of
Southern Africa: Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa,
Swaziland
and Zimbabwe,
and other public and private bodies, notably universities, hold a rich range
of
archival
material.
It is beyond the
scope of the present discussion to assess the richness of these holdings but
one
could note the
existence of some special challenges. For example, in performing its
archival
function, the
National Archives of South Africa (NASA) has had to deal with holdings L
developed in
the colonial and
then Apartheid periods such that "…the holdings reveal a largely partisan,
white-
oriented and
heterosexual reflection of South Africa's social memory.'"(National Archives
of South
Africa, 2001:
4). After the achievement of majority rule, NASA was able to support the
Truth and
Reconciliation
Commission (TRC) by identifying the nature and extent of the illegal
destruction of
public records
by the Apartheid regime (National Archives of South Africa, 2001:11) , and
was also
able to return
to Namibia the records removed by South Africa immediately prior to Namibian
independence
(National Archives of South Africa, 2001:10).
The National
Archives of Namibia provide a national information service by "…preserving
and
making publicly
accessible the collective memory of the nation and of the Government of
Namibia"
and by
contributing to the protection of the rights of all Namibians, and by
enhancing a sense of
their national
identity by acquiring, conserving and providing access to private and public
records
in all formats
and media of national significance (National Archives of Namibia. 2000).
Similarly the
other states have archival services, either as separate bodies or, as in the
case of
Botswana, within
a Ministry such as Labour and Home Affairs (Botswana National Archives and
Records
Services, 2001).
Although there
are many impressive public and private archival holdings in Southern Africa,
the
comment has been
made that '…developing countries are '…focused on primary survival needs,
(and) lack
national information policies, finance and human resources to create
suitable
infrastructures'
(Raseroka, 2001: 4). The implication is that archivists will have to argue
the case
for resources
for this activity against other severely pressing needs, but collective
memory has a
very important
function in maintaining the health of a community. Where records exist in a
tradition of
orality, this requires special sensitivity (Raseroka, 2001: 4).
In addition,
electronic archiving in Southern Africa must be done in a context of the
"digital divide",
that is, the
non-availability of computing facilities and infrastructure such as reliable
and
inexpensive
electricity and telephony to a majority of those in need. However,
initiatives to assist
with the problem
are in progress from governmental bodies such as The Education for
Development and
Democracy Initiative (EDDI) and private corporations such as IBM, Xerox,
Kodak and
Microsoft (IWS, 2001).
Yet without a
store of information, every community would have to relearn from costly
experience
the rules of
survival: physical, psychological, organisational, legal, philosophical and
spiritual.
While archives
are essential to continuity, the actual medium of storage is highly
variable, having
been at various
times, stone, cellulose, metal, paper, celluloid, optical, magnetic,
electronic or
simply oral.
Among these, the oral of particular importance because "…when an old man
dies, a
library
disappears" (Madou Hampate Ba, quoted by Raseroka, 2001: 4).
Psychological
Aspects
3
"Problems of
identity constitute the most serious distinctive psychological disorder of
our time..."
wrote Sommers
nearly 50 years ago, a situation that may have even intensified since then
(1964:332).
However, it is possible to go further and suggest that problems of identity
must be
resolved if the
destruction of communities, organisations and even states is to be avoided.
Archiving thus
not only has an important organisational function; it also has an essential
function
for individual
health and survival through the maintenance of identity. This is because
collective
memory has a
very important function for collective health and the collective will to
survive.
However, the
concept of collective memory is controversial because of its
association with the
concept of a
collective mind, as proposed by Le Bon in 1895 (Le Bon, 1960), and
developed by
Durkheim as
collective consciousness, (Durkheim, 1964: 103n).
It is possible
to say that collective memory is the totality of individually held common
memories. It
is moreover
possible to account for multiple versions of an event without abandoning its
facticity or
the weight of
what has happened (Minow, 1999: 2).
The common
memories stored and maintained in archives are not only essential for
continued
organisational
survival but also essential to the development and maintenance of identity,
"…the
essential
continuous self, the internal, subjective concept of oneself…"(Reber, 1995:
355), as
either an
individual or as a group.
Erikson saw a
strong sense of identity as a generator of energy, and a weak or confused
sense of
identity as a
source of decline (Erikson, 1968:62). As a crisis of identity develops,
powerful
negative
identity factors are produced which "arouse in man a murderous hate of
"otherness"
(Erikson,
1968:62).
Archives also
help in the process by which a society comes to terms with unacceptable
aspects of
its past, a
process very necessary for adjustment. One example of this is provided when
France
was only able,
more than 40 years after the ending of the Algerian war of independence, to
officially allow
the word war (guerre d'Algérie) to be used rather than the
previous military
operations
(France, 1999). In South Africa the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC) which
was set up by
the Government of National Unity to help deal with what happened under
apartheid
has a similar
function.
(Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, 2001).
National
identity has often been studied by cultural anthropologists as "national
character", and
political
scientists have often affirmed the importance of national identity to state
stability, especially
in "young" (ie.
post-colonial) nation-states.
National
identity and state stability have a close contingent relationship, analogous
to the mind/body
relationship,
such that a strong sense of national identity will be congruent with a
highly stable
state. Sometimes
the stability of regimes is obtained through the use of fear, violence, and
forced
or suppressed
identification. In all of these cases, the archivist has a very important
role to play in
the question of
state stability.
Ethical
Aspects
Not all archival
records have organisational and psychological functions for group survival.
In
essence it is
the weighty responsibility of the archivist to make judgements about which
items are to
be kept, with
generally 90 to 95 per cent of material being rejected (Schwirtlich, 1987:
5). In
addition to
archives, human and cultural relics can have extremely important
psychological
functions for
identity and survival, and often the boundary between archive and artefact
can
overlap. In both
cases, the question of rightful ownership can be a matter of life and death.
Here
one could point
to the case of the Bobo priests of Burkina Faso who were driven by the depth
of
4
their anguish to
suicide after the theft of their village's store of ritual objects (Shyllon,
2000: 14).
Given the
importance of collective memory, and of archival and artefactual items as
signifiers and
storers of
information and identity, this is hardly surprising.
Possession of
these items is of the utmost significance, and where possession is by a
foreign
power, it can be
a political and moral affront to the self-respect of an entire nation-state.
A
prominent case
of this is that of the Benin Bronzes and Ivories, taken from West Africa in
controversial
circumstances at the end of the nineteenth century and now held in various
sites,
notably the
British Museum, the Museum of Mankind and the Glasgow Museum (ARM, 2001).
British
authorities have argued that while within their care, these items receive
better curation than
would be the
case if returned, because of lack of expertise and also the problem of
corruption in
Nigeria.
Another case is
that of the Aksum Obelisk, removed from Ethiopia by Fascist Italy in 1937
and
relocated to
Rome where it remains, despite a promise of return by the Italian Government
(Africaonline,
2001).
A third
well-known case is that of the ancient African manuscripts and artefacts,
including the
Kabra Nagast
Bible containing 81 books and a picture of Jesus Christ as a black man, all
currently
held at Windsor
Castle (New African, 1998: 2).
The holding of
human relics can be particularly affronting to the dignity of surviving
individuals,
communities and
even whole continents. An infamous case is that of the Nègre empaillé
(stuffed
Negro),
whereby the body of an African was taken from what is now Botswana in 1830
and placed
on display at a
museum in Spain, where it remained until 1997, as an "…unacceptable
violation of
African
dignity.'"(Shyllon, 2000: 3)(University of Botswana History Department,
2001).
So great has
been the international traffic in the African cultural heritage in recent
times that
African
archaeological sites and historical monuments are now considered to be under
as great a
threat as during
colonial period, whether it be the ancient city mounds in Mali's Middle
Niger, the
ornate doors
from the houses of Swahili Lamu, or the Sakalaves tombs of Madagascar.
(McIntosh,
1994), (ICOM Red
List, 2001).
The ethics of
ownership of artefacts, cultural items and archival material are the same as
for any
other
intellectual and cultural property, and there are remedies provided by
international treaty and
law. However, as
the continuing nature of disputes concerning the several examples above
indicate, these
are not yet fully effective.
In 1972 a UNESCO
Convention on the means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import,
Export
and Transfer of
ownership of Cultural Property came into effect, but unfortunately the
majority of
African
countries that could benefit by becoming States Parties did not. Similarly,
the majority of
African states
were absent from the conference which adopted the UNIDROIT Convention on
Stolen or
Illegally Exported Cultural Objects in 1995 (Shyllon, 2000: 1).
Action for
recovery in foreign courts is a possibility but not highly feasible because
of the
reluctance of
such courts to apply extraterritoriality and the cost involved (Shyllon,
2000: 2).
The
International Council of Museums (ICOM) is particularly concerned at the
looting of African
items and
destruction of sites and aiding in the fight against the illicit traffic of
African cultural
property (ICOM,
2001).
There is also
the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) which works with UNESCO
for
the protection
of traditional knowledge as intellectual property (WIPO, 2001) (Blakeney,
1999).
5
These
initiatives have yet to impact greatly on what has been referred to as "…the
magnitude of the
cultural tragedy
now being played out in Africa.'"(Shyllon, 2000: 14). The nature of the
tragedy is
highlighted by a
report that one village was offered a health clinic in exchange for pieces
from an
archaeological
site (New African, March, 1998). However, a small but significant benefit
that has
emerged from the
African cultural disaster is the assembling of a number of databases
archiving
the range and
depth of African cultural heritage.
A very important
area of threatened cultural heritage with strong identity implications is
that of
language: over
5,000 language names have been identified in sub-Saharan Africa (Spencer,
1985:
387), but many
of these languages are now dead, and of the current languages, nearly 200
are
now facing
extinction (Sasse, 1992: 7). The implications of anticipated grief over
language death
are severely
disruptive to social organisation (Bostock, 1997) and the continued
archiving of
endangered
languages could play a therapeutic role in helping these communities to
adjust. South
Africa's current
language policy is attempting to bring about state stability through
language
preservation by
controlled status adjustment, that is, the enhancement of the status of
previously
devalued
languages and continued official status of Afrikaans (Bostock, 2000).
Technological
Aspects
Can technology
contribute to archiving in Southern Africa? The potential offered by
electronic
archiving has
been described by Myerson as
"…(t)o one side,
there is the experience of illuminated vistas. To the other side, a sense of
existential
confusion, analogous to that invoked in the more apocalyptic texts of
postmodernity…"(Myerson, 1998: 99).
The
technological basis of archiving is of fundamental importance and archivists
have traditionally
been at the
forefront of technical innovation, as they are in the present electronic
age. The
challenge of
handling electronic materials is their short durability (Exon,1995: 2) and
in fact many
significant
losses have already occurred in countries that have advanced in the
implementation of
this technology,
including for example the first electronic mail message of 1964, part of the
U.S.
census of 1960,
and the satellite observations of Brazil taken in the 1970s (Task Force,
1996:2).
The technical
problems are the fragility of the medium and the incompatibility of software
and
hardware, and
are generally solved by periodic refreshment of information whereby it is
migrated
from one
hardware/software configuration to another. “Backward compatibility ” or
refreshment to
earlier
configurations is generally unavailable because of reasons of cost (Task
Force, 1996: 1). In
addition to the
problems of obsolescence and decay through neglect (Exon, 1995: 4) there is
the
problem of
deliberate and accidental corruption through viral infection. The technical
problems are
thus
considerable, but solutions are being proposed through refreshment and
critical fail-safe
mechanisms (Task
Force, 1996: 3) and the standardisation of formats, such as the Text
Encoding
Initiative
(TEI)(Popham and Burnard,1999:1), Computer Aided Design (CAD), geographic
information
systems (GIS)(Task Force,1996:1) and also measures under consideration by
the
International
Standards Organization (ISO, 2000).
A number of
private initiatives towards perfecting the means of gathering archival
information are in
progress. The
major example is the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (Dublin Core, 2000).
Private
electronic archives also play a role in responding to the needs of
maintenance of digital
information. It
is difficult to estimate the number of private or semi-private electronic
archives in
existence but
their variety and significance are great. In engineering, for example, the
integration
of scanners,
conversion software, and storage and retrieval systems is generating complex
management
systems (Puttre,1992).
6
In medicine,
electronic communication, publication and storage have revolutionised
research with
WHO databases
(WHO, 2002) and private sources such as Medline (Delamothe, 1998).
Another
initiative in
the health field with enormous potential for Southern Africa and all
resource-poor
countries is
The Lancet Electronic Research Archive in International Health. The
Lancet's
experimental
electronic research archive (ERA) in international health will be owned by
authors and
administered by
The Lancet. Access will be unrestricted through the ERA website with the
objective
of creating a
searchable electronic public library of research in international health
(The Lancet,
2001).
In the cultural
world where need has less urgency, developments are no less impressive. One
could
cite, for
example' the Computer Aided Design (CAD)
model of the
Athenian Acropolis, the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem (CSA,
2000), or the
Electronic Beowulf, a joint Anglo-American initiative to store and
provide access
to the famous medieval text (Kiernan,1995). The storage, transmission and
instant
availability of
the visual image, as in photographs, is an immense benefit of electronic
archiving, as
shown in, for
example, the archives of Swaziland (Swaziland Digital Archives, 2001).
Impressive
though these
virtual versions of constructions and archives may be, it is doubtful that
these virtual
replications
could ever satisfy the identity needs of the people who cherish them. These
techniques
require
considerable inputs of resource, so that the technical problems are hugely
magnified
among the
countries of Southern Africa.
International
cooperation is also present in the project of the archiving of Southern
Africa. In July
2000, a group of
South African archivists, curators, academics and cultural heritage
specialists
and additional
faculty from the U.S. undertook a three-week training program in digital and
traditional
methods of curation, management, and presentation, both electronic and
traditional.
(MSU, 2000: 1).
Such courses could easily be mounted in the countries of southern Africa,
which
would avoid the
ethical problem created by bringing Southern Africans to the West to learn
the
techniques of
dealing with their own cultures.
Electronic
archiving thus offers a mixed set of positive and negative possibilities in
the context of
Southern Africa.
Conclusion
Archiving is
thus an important activity not only for effective organisational
decision-making but also
for its
psychological function in maintaining those parts of collective memory which
is the basis of
identity. The
ownership of archival material creates problems, similar to any other
intellectual and
cultural
property, but the remedies available have not been greatly effective. A
debate is often
formulated in
terms of acquired benevolent custodial ownership versus rightful but
neglectful or
corrupt
ownership. Electronic archiving technology may appear to provide an answer
through
virtual
ownership but in view of the psychological significance of the collective
record this is highly
unlikely.
However, in other ways, such as in health, medicine, and the archiving of
threatened
languages,
electronic archives have an extremely valuable role to play.
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Archiving in Southern Africa:
Psychological, Ethical
and Technological Aspects
William Bostock, University of
Tasmania
Abstract
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