Some of the other personal collections
Albie Sachs Collection
Albie Sachs was the rapporteur for the ANC’s Constitution Committee founded by Oliver Tambo in Lusaka in 1986. The collection from this period in exile includes his personal notes, correspondence and early drafts of the Constitutional Guidelines produced at an ANC in-house seminar in 1988. After his return from exile, he was elected to the National Executive of the ANC and took an active part in CODESA and the NMNP at Kempton Park. The collection from this period includes documents from socio-legal workshops organised by the ANC and documents produced during the negotiations process. Samples of the collection are embedded in the story of the online exhibition. The full collection including film interviews about the documents will be available in the searchable digital archival repository at a later date. The physical collection is housed at the Mayibuye Centre at the University of the Western Cape.
The Edward Shalala and Synnøve Skjelten Constitutional Assembly Public Participation Programme (PPP) Collection
This collection comprises Edward Shalala’s papers he gathered from his role as the head of the Constitutional Assembly’s Community Liaison Department (CLD) from September 1994 to May 1996. The CLD developed the CA’s Public Participation Programme (PPP) to ensure broad-based input into the Constitution. This collection provides insights into structures, processes and work of the PPP. This collection also includes Synnøve Skjelten’s research into public participation and miscellaneous materials associated with the democratic transition
The album of the Constitutional Assembly
This album was produced by the official photographer of the CA, Subash Jeram, as part of the general media records. The official album was placed in the National Archives. This copy of the album, which includes Jeram’s business card in the cover, is a duplicate copy that was given to the Executive Director of the CA, Hassen Ebrahim. Jeram created the labels in the album. Hassen Ebrahim generously shared the album to be part of this archive.
Constitutional Court Oral History Project (CCOHP)
The “Audible Legacy” Project comprising of 86 interviews, aimed to capture the memories and experiences of the people involved in the formative stages of South Africa’s Constitutional Court. Their memories, recorded in comprehensive, reliable, and accessible form is a record of how an abstract constitutional ideal was converted into a functioning constitutional organism. The interviews were conducted in 2011 and 2012 and were submitted by the Constitutional Court Trust in digital format. The transcripts can be accessed through this inventory from where they can be downloaded in PDF format. The audio recordings of the interviews are accessible at the Historical Papers Research Archive in Mp3 format.
The Constitution Hill Trust Oral History Project (CHT OHP)
The CHT OHP project was set up by CHT in 2018 as part of its work for the establishment of a physical and virtual exhibition of the making of the Constitution and the Constitutional Court. The collection – which is still growing – consists of 60 interviews with people that had been involved in the constitution-making process as well as judges who have served on the Constitutional Court. The interviews give us the insiders’ perspectives of the constitution-making process as well as the creation and the functioning of the Constitutional Court.
