The PTL collection is a small collection (0.5 linear metres). It has been arranged to reflect its main activities. This collection also reflects the increasing militancy of teacher organisations, and the impact the education crisis of the 1980s had on teachers.

Sections A - H deals with the PTL itself and its membership. As the PTL was formed under the state of emergency and operated under repressive conditions, there are no minutes of its executive meetings available as these were not kept. This phenomenon holds true for many organisations during this period who were opposed to the apartheid regime.

Section I - K deals with the whole teacher unity process at the National and the Southern Transvaal regional and NECC level at which the members of PTL were involved. This process culminated in the formation of the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (SADTU). Copies of minutes as well as hand-written notes of some of these meetings provide interesting insight to the whole process of the formation of a national teacher organisation

Section L has files kept by the PTL on the various teachers organisations in the country. It was not uncommon for PTL executive members to also be members of some of these organisations, more notably TASA. Section M are miscellaneous documents relating to education that the PTL had collected in the course of its activities.

The collection is very small, 0.3 linear metres. SAHA received it as part of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) collection, but it is clear that it constitutes an archive in its own and was added to the NIC collection by mistake.

This collection is not a large collection, comprising of 10 archival boxes. It is also not the official NIC collection but was donated to SAHA by the Centre for Community and Labour Studies (CCLS) in Durban. Some of the material given to us by CCLS has been separated from this collection as it was clear that it constituted a separate archive, that of the South African Tin Workers' Union.

The collection includes a memoir and a tribute.

The collection includes minutes, reports, conference papers and audio recordings, photographs and other organisational material. Of particular interest are documents on the organisation of white activists in the Democratic Movement.