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On 27 November 1981, Dr Neil Aggett was taken into custody as part of a massive clamp down by apartheid security police on trade unionists and other activists. Less than three months later, on 5 February 1982, he died at the notorious John Vorster Square after 70 days of detention without trial. The story of Neil Aggett’s death in detention is one of those included in SAHA’s new online exhibit on the notorious John Vorster Square that appears on the new Google Cultural Institute website (http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/).

SAHA was invited by the Google Cultural Institute earlier this year to become a key partner in the development and piloting of an online curation tool being developed using Google technologies in order to enable organisations around the world to preserve and promote cultural, historic, and artistic content online.

The early phases of this Google initiative aim to showcase a collection of stories of important 20th century events, including the story of apartheid, created in part with SAHA and other heritage organisations in South Africa. This digital collection of memories and artefacts is now accessible for every internet user anywhere in the world to experience.

SAHA selected Between life and death: stories from John Vorster Square as the first online exhibit to create within this platform. This exhibit is an adaptation of an interactive DVD of the same name, commissioned by SAHA and produced by Doxa Productions as part of the SAHA / Sunday Times Heritage Project in 2007. A virtual walk through the police cells on the 10th floor of South Africa's most notorious police station where the security forces reigned in apartheid South Africa, the DVD features interviews with former detainees and security police, as well as photographs, press clippings, drawings and archival footage, revealing the horrors of detention without trial. Here is the link to our new exhibit within the Google Cultural Institute site.

The Google Cultural Institute site also features other significant SA events such as the Women’s March of 1954, the Treason trial and the Sharpeville Massacre.

Copies of the John Vorster Square DVD, along with a new guide for history educators, are available at our offices for R100 a copy (guide and DVD) – proceeds will go towards reproduction costs as SAHA is a non-profit entity. For more info, see http://www.saha.org.za/publications/between_life_death_educators_guide.htm

ABOUT THE SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY ARCHIVE
 

The South African History Archive (SAHA) is an independent human rights archive dedicated to documenting, supporting and promoting greater awareness of past and contemporary struggles for justice in South Africa.

SAHA aims to:

• Recapture lost and neglected histories;
• Record aspects of South African democracy in the making;
• Bring history out of the archives and into schools, universities and communities in new and innovative ways;
• Extend the boundaries of freedom of information in South Africa;
• Raise awareness, both nationally and internationally, of the role of archives and documentation in promoting and defending human rights.

SAHA’s move to Constitution Hill

After nearly two decades based in the William Cullen Library on Wits East Campus, SAHA has in recent years outgrown our current office and archival storage space at the university. As of August 2012, SAHA has relocated to the Women’s Jail at Constitution Hill. This move represents an exciting stage in SAHA's development - as a heritage site steeped in history and housing South Africa's Constitutional Court, Constitution Hill offers a fitting environment for SAHA's work as a human rights archive with a focus on the intersection between documentation, and both past and contemporary struggles for justice in South Africa.

As Lauren Segal of Constitution Hill explains:

The Constitution Hill Trust is delighted that such an important independent archive has found a home at Constitution Hill. SAHA's rich liberation archive and its activist approach to access to information issues means that the organisation belongs perfectly within this human rights precinct. SAHA's location in the Women's Jail courtyard means that this space will become animated with the key concerns of memory and storytelling. The women ex-prisoners will be delighted that this transformation of a place that once held so much pain. The Trust is also delighted that SAHA will be curating the Hill's own archive and making this accessible to the public as well as running programmes on the Hill. We look forward to many years of good partnership.

The SAHA Board of Trustees remains grateful for Wits University's generous support of the organisation which has enabled SAHA's growth since 1994. This is by no means the end of the relationship with Wits - SAHA will continue to partner with a range of university departments on various research, outreach and educational programmes.