Soweto History and Archives Project
In 2023 the History Workshop was awarded a grant for the Soweto History and Archives Project (SHAP!).
Despite its prominence, Soweto’s history has not been chronicled in depth. The existing scholarship of the township has been limited to a few salient themes, being the student uprisings of 1976 and liberation struggles. Other publications include sociological analyses and biographies of leading political luminaries. Very little has been written on local histories of Soweto.
Official archives on Soweto are mainly located in the National Archives, which includes archives of the various municipalities that constituted the so-called Black Local Authorities. Typically, however, these collections rarely contain material on the rich everyday experiences of residents.
SHAP aims to reprioritise Soweto’s history from a local and everyday person’s perspective. This will entail producing comprehensive histories of Soweto through academic research (by established academics and postgraduate students) and in partnership with community organisation in various Public History initiatives.
To constitute a community-based archive of Soweto, comprising oral histories and material collected from organisations, families and individuals. There is a critical need to create a Soweto archive, to collect what may be lying in precarious conditions and most importantly to engage various communities and institutions of Soweto to create community archives.
The final aim is to make accessible and disseminate histories and archives to the residents of Soweto and broader publics in general, with a particular emphasis on education institutions.