Archives & Special Collections

Welcome to our Archives & Special Collections platform for Research and Community Engagement!

The Historical Papers Research Archive is one of the most comprehensive public archives in Southern Africa, with over 3400 collections. Our archive holds the records of individuals and collectives, with a wide and diverse scope spanning, from early colonial history, to all aspects of governance, religion and genealogy, health, the arts, culture and traditions, anti-Apartheid resistance, and the post-1994 South Africa, to attempt naming a few. The collections include the personal papers of individuals, many of which have shaped South Africa's past and present, and of collectives, such as human rights NGOs, trade unions, political parties, women's organizations, large volume of political trials, the Anglican Church and other religious bodies, cultural institutions, the papers of human rights activists, artists, photographers and other cultural workers, as well as civil society movements and organizations. The collections housed at Historical Papers consist of diaries, letters, memoranda, reports, minute-books, press clippings, pamphlets, photographs, drawings, maps, oral interviews, trial transcripts, and financial, legal, and personal documents. They are contained in various formats such as paper-based records, microfiche, microfilm, photographs, slides, negative and positive film, tapes, DVD and CDs, audiovisual formats, and digital formats.

More recently the University has received two large historical archives, the Barlow World Rand Mines archive and the archive of the Johannesburg Consolidated Investment company (JCI) from Anglo Platinum Rustenburg. These large holdings are now housed in the basement of the Education Library, which is a new archival space under the oversight of Historical Papers.

We have also been joined by the South African History Archive (SAHA), which has moved its holdings to Wits. It is housed in our new archival spaces in the basement of the Education Library.