Original solidarity file folder for Botswana orientation center, Gaborone, designed by Judy Seidman (Medu).

Shades of Change ticket and flyer for Medu play with a portrait of Bochana Mokwena, artwork by Judy Seidman.

The black writer holds a key position in liberating South Africa. Richard Rive believes that black writers personalise individual experience and that this plays a role in showing what society was, what it is and what it is heading towards. Rive argues that black writers owe allegiance to their own writing, their society and to their humanity.

Culture and liberation are intimately related. Life, according to the authors, is a process of struggle to reach higher levels of civilisation, a process in which art is deeply embedded. The struggle against Apartheid and different forms of colonial violence is one which is intertwined with culture and artistic expression. Even once equality is reached within society, a further cross-pollination of cultural ideas and forms will occur leading to a richer, popular and more universal culture.

Nadine Gordimer writes this insightful paper on the key concepts of "relevance" and "commitment" in relation to black and white writers. She argues that black writers write from their communities and have daily lives which are embedded within relevant contexts. So too, their commitment to black liberation is innate. She suggests that white writers ought to break out of white value systems and a false consciousness to create relevant art and to openly admit that their experience as being white is of a different order to being black. These are the imperatives which both black and white writers face. The whole aim of art, in its attainment of truth and essence, requires the white writer to attain a true consciousness so that both black and white writers may work for the same end.

Standing Committee of officials met on the 2/3 July, Council of members met on the 4 July 1984 and Summit on the 6th July at Gaborone, Botswana.

This pre-seminar paper from the Publishing and Research Unit entitled "Opening the Doors of Culture" suggests ideas for the a paper to be presented at a seminar in 1982. It gives reflections on how to bring culture to the people and how to use it as a tool for resistance. Handwritten notes on the paper.