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TSHEPO MOLOI: Hi. My name is Tshepo Moloi. I teach history at the University of Johannesburg. Before then, I was a member of the History Workshop

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at Wits, where I was involved in a number of history projects, looking at community or local history projects. As I indicated in my introduction, that I've been involved in a number of historical projects,

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mainly focusing on liberation histories of South Africa. What many people know is the African National Congress, which was formed in 1912, and it's still surviving to this day.

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And then in 1959, it had a breakaway, where the Pan Africanist Congress was formed. And later on, you have the United Democratic Front, which was launched in 1983, as part

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of the internal movement, which was opposing apartheid system. But less is known about some of the individuals, particularly at local level in different communities. If you ask a student at any point

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to tell you who the leader of the ANC is, chances are they will say Nelson Mandela, which is true. They will mention Oliver Tambo who led the ANC in exile for nearly 30 years.

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They will mention Walter Sisulu, who was in prison with Nelson Mandela. But not many will tell you about the local activists who were part of the liberation movement,

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either as supporters of the ANC, which had been banned since 1960 till 1990. But those are the kind of people that my research interests are on because in most cases, as historians, we

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tend to focus on those that are on leadership that is already known and popular. But we tend to marginalise people who are not known. And in the research projects that I've been involved in,

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I was able to uncover quite a number of people who were involved in the liberation struggle, whose names, if we are not doing that kind of history, would remain out of sight in terms

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of their involvement in history. I'll give you an example. I was involved in a research project for my PhD in a small town in the northern Free State called Kroonstaad.

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The local township that called Maokeng. And as I was doing interviews with people in that area, many names came up. One of the often recalled names of a person that

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was involved in the struggle in that area was a woman called Matseki. Each and every person that I interviewed, they recalled her that she was at the forefront of mobilising

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women in 1956 to resist the extension of passes or reference books to women. And unfortunately, she had passed on when I went to do my research there.

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But the narratives that I got from people who knew her personally or those who have heard about her were very rich. And that kind of history, I think,

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it helps to broaden and give a fuller picture of the people who were involved in the liberation struggle of South Africa. And my take is that we're not saying that people like Nelson Mandela or Walter Sisulu from the ANC,

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those from the PAC, like Robert Sobukwe, Mothopeng, Potlako Leballo, should not be researched. But I think we need to create a balance so that we're able to-- when we teach-- so that we give a fuller picture

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of the liberation struggle and the people who were involved in the struggle but also how, especially those who remained inside the country, opposed the apartheid government.

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And in the 1980s, we had, as I said, that we have the United Democratic Front, which was launched in 1983, made up of different organisations, or affiliates, as they call them.

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And in those affiliates, again, if we look at-- read the history of UDF, which is very limited, I might add-- I mean, the authoritative book on UDF to date is that which was written by Professor Jeremy Seekings.

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But if you look at the history of the United Democratic Front is that millions and millions of people were involved in different affiliates of the UDF. But few people are known in their roles

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in the United Democratic Front or the opposition to apartheid. So I think if we want to broaden the scope of understanding the liberation history of South Africa, we need to start moving towards the direction of trying

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to research and document the role and activities of different people who were involved in the opposition against apartheid, particularly women and young people,

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because you also had student formations. For example, in South Africa, we had what was called the Congress of South African Students, which was formed in 1979.

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It spearheaded and mobilised students across the country until it was banned in 1985. You also had other youth formations, for example, those who were aligned to the Pan Africanist

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Congress, such as the Azanian National Youth Unity. And regrettably that very little is known about those local activists and the activism that they undertook during the liberation struggle.

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So those are some of-- I mean, it's good to say that Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, Albertina Sisulu, and so on and so forth. But I think we also need to try to get to understand

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the role of others, especially those whose names, whose role has not been documented either adequately or has not been documented at all. Then that will allow us to understand

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the people and their role in the liberation struggle of South Africa. I must add that research, especially on local histories, started relatively late in South Africa.

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I mean, many were dated back to the mid '70s, when we had scholars, especially those who attended in USA or Europe, coming back to take up positions in South Africa.

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They were generally termed or labelled as revisionist scholars, especially at Wits University and then UCT, University of Cape Town. Then they started to say, but let's try to-- let's pause

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and try to understand the history of South-- liberation struggle but also labour struggle and so on. But let's try now to go now down to the people who are directly involved in the struggle.

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So they started to interview people at local level, vis a vis, focusing on what many would term big man history. So because of that, there was a vacuum in terms of evidence as to who were the people who were

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involved at the local level. So we needed to go to different localities or communities to identify people so that we can interview them. So that was one challenge that was still faced with,

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although now there's a spread and an escalation in terms of publications on local communities or local histories. The other challenge that-- when I started doing my research--

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was that many people were reluctant to talk. I remember one of the excuses or reasons that they will give was that, yes, I could grant you an interview. But there are certain things that I'm not

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prepared to talk about, especially revolving around my activism. And it's understandable, at the time, that-- because people were beginning--

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some had just returned from exile. And they claimed that they needed permission from the liberation movements to talk about certain issues or their role.

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And that partly created another challenge because then that means we could not, as historians, know other people who were involved, because we rely on people that we

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interview to refer us to other people who were involved with them. So compounding the challenge was that there were very little or limited sources, especially

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secondary sources, even primary sources about the people who were involved in the struggle. I'll give you an example. Because of the state, the apartheid state,

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which had come down excessively on the media, is that the media, particularly print media, was not even-- your television-- was not allowed to mention names of activists.

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At best, they could mention an incident that had happened. But in most cases, they wouldn't mention names of people. So that was a challenge because you will know about the incident.

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But you will know about the people who were directly involved. Just to give you a practical example about what I was just mentioning is that when I was started

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doing a project in Mpumalanga province, in the Lowveld of Mpumalanga province, trying to get to understand the role of local activists in that part of the country, there's

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an incident that happened in 1982, 1983, where a police station in a place called Tonga was attacked. There was a shootout. And then it was reported in the media.

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As I was going through my research, archival research, I came across newspaper reports about that media-- that story. But no names were written. No names were mentioned in the report.

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It was just about the incident, when it happened, which was good because it's a good pointer. And later, when I started doing interviews, it was then that I started to get

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to understand who were the people who were involved in that attack, especially from the liberation movement side, the members of uMkhonto we Sizwe, which was the armed wing of the ANC.

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And fortunately, I was able to interview one of the person who commanded the attack. And I got an interesting interview from him-- and he subsequently wrote a book about that.

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So I think there are challenges. But as we move along, doing more and more history and local studies, community studies, interviewing local activists, we're

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beginning now to overcome some of these challenges. And the more we do interviews, for example, then it becomes a written source that students, researchers, or whoever want to use them can be able to access them.

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So I think that on its own is trying to help the history that we would like to know about the liberation struggle in South Africa and to popularise some of the people who, if we did not do this, they will remain unknown.

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They will be written out of history. But also, I think what is interesting now, what is happening is that more and more people, especially those who are involved in the liberation struggle

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from the ANC side, are beginning to write their own memoirs. I think that is very helpful because it becomes an additional source for us historians to draw from. And we also now, interestingly, now we

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have a records from liberation movements, different liberation movements, your ANC, your PAC, UDF, which are located mainly at the University of Fort Hare, the Liberation History Archive.

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So that also assists us in terms of getting to know more about what was happening in exile and the names of some people, although I must say that going through such material,

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you have to read it very closely because, one, because of the situation and security reason, not all the information were written in those documents. And in cases where you have names, some of the names

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will be pseudonyms or what historians call the noms de guerre of these activists. So we can use those, which are very good in terms of shedding some light about the liberation

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struggle. But also we have to use them alongside other sources, like your books, memoirs, journal articles, and oral history interviews.

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I think, in that, if we do that, then we are able to overcome or circumvent some of the challenges that our predecessors, when they started, they were faced with.

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HEIDI BROOKS: My name is Heidi Brooks. And I teach at the School of Governance at Wits University. My background is in political studies. And much of my research has involved

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exploring South Africa's political history, particularly the struggle against apartheid, the history of its liberation movements, and also the transition to democracy. Currently, I teach students in the School of Governance,

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who are exploring issues of South Africa's contemporary political terrain and issues of governance, policy, and development. I think archival collections are incredibly important for helping

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us to understand our present. Archival collections tell us a lot about where we've come from. And particularly, they explore and reveal a huge amount about events, conversations, communications,

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people's thinking at the time. And in my own research, I have used archives to really try and understand where South Africa has come from and particularly why we are where we are today.

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My own interests have emerged from studying South Africa's liberation movements, the African National Congress in particular. And what I wanted to do in my research was to explore what

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seems to be a very long-standing tradition in the ANC of popular participation and mass organisation. And I wanted to understand where that idea had come from. So it helped me tremendously to be

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able to access written documents, conversations, annotated ideas about the African National Congress's thinking around participation, what it envisaged for the role of the people, not only in the liberation struggle

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but in a future democratic South Africa. Archives can also help us to reconsider what we know about the present or add new dimensions to what we know.

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One of the things I found when studying the history of apartheid, and particularly the struggle against apartheid and the democratic transition, is that a lot of the events taking place within South Africa

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were not happening in a vacuum. They were happening in a bigger global context, issues of geopolitics and power relations, a bigger ideological context.

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And many of the leaders of the ANC were either operating on the ground in South Africa or were in exile overseas. And so archival collections that show us

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how global events, ideas influences conversations also shaped the liberation struggle and the thinking of liberation leaders is really, really important. Many of the leaders of South Africa's liberation movements

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were either operating underground in South Africa, or they were in exile overseas. And so there's a bigger global ideological context that also comes into play in thinking about the kind of ideas

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and influences on the liberation movement during that time. That was particularly what I was interested in exploring. And one of the wonderful things about archives was that in coming across documents

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that recorded conversations at meetings, the exchange of ideas, thinking about how to approach the struggle but also ideas about how the ANC envisaged a future democratic South Africa were really important in informing us

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about the ideas that have moved into the present. So much of my research has looked at the history of the ANC's ideas, how they shape not only its thinking about the struggle

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but how they shaped its thinking about democracy and the kind of democracy that was envisaged for a South Africa postapartheid. Also, I think a great thing about archives--

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and I certainly found this-- was that in going through archival collections, finding documents, correspondence letters, communications between individuals, it helped me to also identify individuals

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who could be interviewed. So a large number of activists, former ANC leaders and cadres who I was able to interview for my research were identified through the archival process.