It has been recognized that there is no comprehensive and complete archive on The Market Theatre that covers the years mentioned above, and this is a serious gap in historical recording of knowledge in South Africa. The archives that exist at present are housed in various places across the country. These include the Wits Historical Papers, The Star Newspaper, NELM and the State Theatre archive. This project proposed filling that gap by initially establishing what is missing in the various existing archives, negotiating with custodians of said archives in order to possibly bring original material together under one roof or to make copies of this material. The project also aimed at conducting interviews across the country with practitioners who worked at The Market Theatre during that time in order to compile a living memory that will be included in the archive, before this valuable knowledge is lost. This archive will enable those researchers, academic or otherwise, to access knowledge on the art of that era, information on Apartheid and the arts, and The Market Theatre in general. There is no other archive that specifically addresses performance during the Apartheid era. It is thus vitally important that this history is readily available to anyone who might need to access it. It is also imperative that this history is recorded before it is lost. Innovation lies in the content of the archive.
The collection contains the organisational records of SECTION 27, and also incorporates the records of the AIDS Law Project and other related organisations such as the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC).
The collection contains material relating to the history of the Egoli Foundation, its activities, minutes of the meetings, chairman's reports, celebrations of 100 Years of Johannesburg, correspondence on heritage projects, production and erection of plaques, Newsletter of the Foundation, architectural plans and photographs. Majority of the records in the collection illustrate the activities of Witwatersrand Branch of the Simon van der Stel Foundation, which was the predecessor of the Egoli Heritage Foundation. The Egoli Foundation records are mainly related to the organization activities in Johannesburg and its surroundings.
The collection contains institutional records, research and writings of the Federation of Covenant People, as well as publications of interest to the work of the Federation.
The collection contains records of court cases processed between the years of 2005 and 2016 and retained by the Centre of Applied Legal Studies (CALS), a civil society organisation based at the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand.
The scope of this collection relates in the main to aspects of education in post-Apartheid South Africa, with inputs from various entities, organisations and Government departments.
This collection charts the evolution of one movement towards trade union unity in South Africa in the 1970s. Section 2 (added later) includes the records of MAWU after 1980. (See also NUMSA, AG2555).
