News and Updates

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Advocate George Bizos Papers @ Wits

The personal and working papers of Advocate George Bizos, which were donated to Wits University by the Bizos family, following his passing in 2020, are now awaiting processing.

George Bizos, an alumni of Wits University, remains in our minds as one of South Africa's outstanding human rights lawyers. His legal career spans from the 1963 Rivonia Trial, the Steve Biko and Neil Aggett Commissions of Inquiry, to the post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and to the 2012 Marikana Commission of Inquiry. He was one of the architects of South Africa's first democratic Constitution, alongside his long standing colleague Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson amongst many others. As an Advocate he served as Senior Counsel at the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) and was a Board member of the Centre for Applied legal Studies at Wits University.

His papers, which were transferred from his offices at the LRC to Wits Historical Papers, in collaboration with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, will now be processed and described, for which the Library received generous funding from the family of George Bizos. His archive will subsequently be open for engagement and research.

Achmat Dangor Papers @ Wits

The Achmat Dangor Papers are part of the Achmat Dangor Legacy Project (ADLP), an initiative of Audrey Elster, with generous funding from the Ford Foundation. They are now deposited at Historical Papers.

Achmat Dangor was a South African writer, poet and political activist against Apartheid. He worked with institutions such as the Kagiso Trust, the Independent Development Trust (IDT), UNAIDS, the Nelson Mandela Childrens Fund (NMCF) and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. His literary works included poetry collections such as Bulldozer (1983) and Private voices (1992), and novels such as Waiting for Leila (1981), the Z Town Trilogy (1990), Kafka's Curse: Novella & Three Other Stories (1997), Bitter Fruit (2001), Strange Pilgrimages (2013) and Dikeledi: Child of Tears No More (2017).

The Achmat Dangor Papers include his manuscripts, correspondence, awards, journals, diaries, notebooks, newspaper clippings, photographs and artwork, as well as working papers from various institutions, and oral history interviews. They are presently being digitised by the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

Papers of Sol Plaatje received from SOAS

A collection of papers from Solomon Plaatje, which were held at the SOAS Library, University of London, were now returned to South Africa.

The papers of Solomon Tshekisho (Sol) Plaatje have been a longstanding feature and most research collection in the Historical Papers Research since the late 1970s. They were deposited by historians from South Africa, the UK and the US, following their extensive research of Sol Plaatje’s life and work. The collection that was established at the Wits libraries at the time, was called the Silas Thelensho Molema and Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje Papers  https://researcharchives.wits.ac.za/papers-of-silas-t-molema-and-solomon-t-plaatje. Later, into the 1990s, this collection was joined by yet another outstanding item, being a notebook kept by Sol Plaatje during the Siege of Mafeking, which took place during the South African War of 1899-1902, and which saw the town and community of Mafeking completely surrounded and cut off by British forces for several months from 1899-1900. This humble looking notebook would become known as Sol Plaatje’s diary of the siege of Mafeking https://researcharchives.wits.ac.za/solomon-tshekisho-plaatje-6 .

Around the same time in the 1970s, another deposit of material from Sol Plaatje was entrusted to the SOAS Library, University of London. They included amongst others Sol Plaatje’s Canadian passport which allowed him to travel (he was denied a passport in South Africa) notebooks, Sechuana proverbs, press cuttings on life in South Africa, segregation and the native pass laws, source material for Plaatje’s books and review of his novel ‘Mhudi’, some rare publications and photographs.

The return of these papers, and the transfer of this collection from SOAS to Wits University was agreed in September and shortly thereafter it arrived in South Africa on the 6 October 2024. The handing over ceremony took place between our Vice-Chancellor Prof Vilakazi, and our former Vice-Chancellor and now Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Prof Habib. It not only marked a home-coming of Sol Plaatje’s papers, but also a gesture-in-kind not only to the people of South Africa, but to the family of Sol Plaatje and their heritage.