SALDRU CLIPPINGS COLLECTION
1975 - 2000
SALDRU's press clipping collection was invaluable in researching
South Africa's transition to democracy...Reading through the
incredibly "well-organised and complete collection, I was able to
trace the daily activities of the anti-apartheid movement, the
evolving response on the part of business, and the attempt of the
state at various levels to control the movement. Preserving the
collection will benefit scholars as well as journalists, students and
citizens for decades to come"
Elisabeth Jean Wood
Professor of Political Science, Yale University
Research Professor, Santa Fe Institute and author of Forging
Democracy from Below (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
The clippings collection built up by the Southern Africa Labour &
Development Research Unit (Saldru) in the School of Economics at the
University of Cape Town covers what is probably the most crucial quarter
century in South Africa's history. Started in the mid-1970s as a necessary
tool to help social scientists and others to keep track of what was happening
inside the country and in the wider region of Southern Africa, the collection
grew daily as Saldru staff, student interns and visiting scholars helped to
mark and clip a number (though not all) of the major English-language
newspapers from around the country. Cuttings were then sorted into some 89
main subject headings (from Africa & Agriculture to the World Bank &
Zimbabwe) and filed in A-4 boxes in the Saldru library where they were
consulted on a regular basis by scholars from all over the world and by
students writing special assignments in economics, politics, sociology and
other disciplines. The growing collection proved invaluable to everybody for
it enabled researchers to trace events which had not been recorded in any
other way.
As the collection grew to over a million clippings---all pasted on sheets of
scrap A-4 paper and filed, eventually, in no less than 2500 box files---it
occupied an increasingly large amount of valuable library space and the
clippings were threatened with incineration. Saldru thus made a bold (some
might say foolish) decision to save the collection by harnessing the new
digital revolution and scanning every clipping even before it was possible to
raise the necessary funds for this endeavour.
The results, we believe, more than justify that decision. The entire collection
is now available on a mere 14 DVDs and can readily be accessed. Thus
either at one's desk or (if the DVDs have all been loaded onto an internal
server) or at a library consol one may click through the clippings (all of
which are now numbered) in a particular file researching for the material
that one needs.
Bill Nasson, Professor of History and Head of Department at the University
of Cape Town who was himself once a young researcher at Saldru writes of
his indebtedness to the newsclippings holdings, on a daily basis. He goes on
to add that, "I was also able to observe the meticulous professionalism with
which this news archive was constructed and supervised, turning it into a
monumental print data resource on modern South and Southern Africa It
has provided an essential service to students and scholars, many of whom
praise it not only for its comprehensive weightiness, but also its intrinsic
fascination and comprehensiveness. For students of the more recent South
African past the Saldru press extracts collection stands as an unrivalled
research tool. This is an enormously impressive research record which
cannot be recommended too highly."
