The Information Professional

BD live Apartheid revisited, for a better future.

 

"Kennedy is an archivist and is careful to point out that she is not a historian. She says she was drawn to this work because she was "very interested in how we use information to support development and human rights. Without information, you can’t do anything. In the constitution it’s called a leveraging right."

SA’s new information legislation has thus been keeping the archive "very, very busy". The new Protection of Personal Information Act has caused a major headache for archivists, who are having to go through all the information they hold to ensure personal information is protected, even if the documents have been bequeathed.

The flip side is the "secrecy bill", which Kennedy sees as "the next big challenge" for the archive.

The exhibition is stark, even sparse, but deeply affecting. Kennedy says she and designer Vaughan Sadie struggled to create a display that would unsettle without preaching.

"How do you create an exhibition that unsettles people’s assumptions of the past without disempowering them? It’s so easy to present something singular that takes one side. We have tried to give no judgment. This is more about the complexity and it hopefully allows viewers to find their place in the history."

• Between Life and Death: Stories from John Vorster Square, Old Fort Ramparts, Constitution Hill, Kotze St, Braamfontein. Entrance is free, open Monday to Friday 9am-5pm, and Saturday 10am-3pm, www.saha.org.za"