Abstract:
Many archival scholars in South Africa and elsewhere lament of archives repositories that continue to reflect the activities of colonial masters, while excluding the memories of the previously marginalised. This is also the case with memories and stories of the athletic running community in South Africa, especially black athletes. Sport, including athletics, has been demonstrated as an instrument of solidarity of fragmented cultures. In South Africa, where sport is of such significance, it is still minimally represented in public archival holdings. Despite the mandate to transform the archival system in South Africa, evidence suggests that imperialism and colonisation, or rather domination of whites, have shaped and remains to shape the country’s archival holdings. Even after the tangled pursuit of decolonising archive collections that began in 1996 through the enactment of the new constitution, archives and the archival profession remain as they were, animated in all aspects of life by Western colonials. This qualitative study explores the feasibility of building inclusive archives through collection of sports memories at the Gauteng Provincial Archives Repository (GPAR). The study adopted oral history as a design and triangulated it with content analysis to mitigate prejudices that come with orality. Athlete participants were identified through snowball sampling and data was collected using both oral testimony interviews from athletes with first-hand information and document analysis of policy and legislative framework, as well as old newspaper cuttings.
The study established that the provincial archives repository uses the GPARS Act enacted in 2013 to acquire non-public records. However, it was established that there is a tendency to perpetuate elitism by documenting mostly oral history of prominent members of the community with political power, while neglecting the stories of the minority and marginalised. As a result, records that can contribute to inclusive or total archives in South Africa are held in the care of a wide range of organisations, institutions and individuals. Indeed, the study revealed that of most historical athletes’ memories from their running careers, including awards ceremony certificates, trophies, winning medals, Springbok jerseys, newspaper clippings and pictures, are in their possession. However, there is no provincial register of such counter-archives.
In this regard, athletes’ houses have been transformed into museums encompassing all their running memories, displayed all over their living rooms. Not only do athletes safeguard their memories in their homes but they even possess rich, forgotten history of legendary runners from the apartheid era, including that of Benoni Malaka, Humphrey Kgosi, Mathews Batswadi, Titus Mamabolo, Mathews Motshwarateu, Albert Moholwa, Lawrence Peu, Simon Peu and many more. As such, only few athletes oversee forgotten historical memories of most legendary runners and in some instances without specialised handling, also compounded by that; these archival memories are only accessible to those blessed enough to be close to these legendary runners. As the athletes have indicated their willingness to donate their memories, this study recommends that to build inclusive archives, these athletes’ memories should be secured through GPAR initiatives that aim to collect non-public records valuable to aspects of province history from institutions and individuals. This is an opportunity not to be missed to build inclusive archives using athletics sporting code as the starting point to close gaps that has existed for a long time.
