Towards Public Domain Management of Liberation Movement Heritage Records in Eastern and Southern Africa

Abstract

This article reports on research into the management of liberation movement archives in Eastern and Southern Africa. It is based on a systematic review of literature on the subject, content analysis of national archival legislations in relation to the management of liberation movement archives, inspection visits to such archives in the region, and qualitative content analysis of the responses to an open-ended survey questionnaire administered on the heads of national archival institutions of the countries in the region. The study found out that the archival legislation dealing with the management of private archives is outdated, lacks clarity and are punctuated by latent passivity, and that the available regulatory instruments are inadequate to ensure appropriate acquisition for long term public domain management of the liberation movement archives that are currently managed ineffectively by various private archives in the region. The study recommends that such archives, because of their national heritage importance, should be decommissioned from private custody and managed by the various national archival institutions for the benefit of posterity.