Nelson Mandela Foundation launches anti-apartheid archive resource

In May 2009, the Nelson Mandela Foundation launched an anti-apartheid movement (AAM) archive resource on its website, listing international organisations involved in anti-apartheid activities and those archives now responsible for preserving and making available records of these organisations.

At the moment, the archive contains those organisations for which the Foundation managed to locate records in the time that was available for this project. Unfortunately, many countries and organisations are not included in this overview - partly because the study relied largely on internet resources - and as a result the view of history that emerges is biased towards Western Europe, North America and Australia. While, at the moment, there are only South African records available under Africa, the Foundation is hoping to populate this region with records from other African countries at a later date as and when those records become available.

Virtually every country in the world has a history of anti-apartheid activity, in diverse forms, and the AAM archive resource is the first step towards a more comprehensive picture.

In many countries, anti-apartheid activities were linked (formally or informally) with local struggles against oppression of many kinds. Most anti-apartheid movements did not restrict their activities to South Africa, but supported liberation movements in Southern Africa more broadly. Besides individual countries, a range of regional and international organisations added their voices to the struggles against apartheid.

The Foundation would like to encourage anyone with any further information or records to add to this resource to contact the Foundation at nmf@nelsonmandela.org .

Copy supplied by NMF.