South African National Archives Week 5 -9 May 2014 - SABC Radio Archives busy with 2014 Elections

The SABC Radio Archives have been busy with requests for the South African National Elections 2014 this week, which culminated in voting day on 7 May.
It is the same week of National Archives Week from 5 - 9 May 2014.

The theme for National Archives Week is:

“Archives for Democracy, Accountability and Transparency”.

The SABC Sound Archives preserves material for the following reasons (copied from the SABC Media Libraries website) - which addresses the theme of this week perfectly!

• "To preserve SABC broadcasts and raw material as a corporate function;
• To be of service as a well-organised source of broadcast material to the SABC;
• To preserve permanently highlights in the history of the development and broadcast patterns of broadcasting in South Africa;
• To bequeath to future generations an audio-image of South Africa at certain periods as it was portrayed by the SABC;
• To provide researchers with information and facts on sound carriers that are not available in any other form;
• To preserve, as part of the National Broadcaster’s function and as far as possible, complete recordings of the South African culture legends and oral traditions) including a comprehensive set of nature and habitat sounds of South Africa."

Obakeng Phiri, Sound Restoration Archivist, found the following clip from 20 years back - our first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994.

With the 2014 elections, the SABC Radio Archives are especially busy during this time with requests about the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994. This clip is from a report by Angie Kapelianis in 1994 and Nelson Mandela saying that the first vote is a great moment in South Africa.

The SABC Radio Archives is part of the SABC Media Libraries, the information hub for audio and printed material relating to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), the national broadcaster of South Africa.


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Blog post by Karen du Toit, and audio clip found by archivist Obakeng Phiri.