The collection contains documents generated by the South African Police, particularly its Security Branch, mainly before 1994.

Included are amongst other:
Reports relating to organisations and alliances; Information and reports relating to regions, including former Homelands and Namibia; Files on individual activists; Reports and memoranda relating to education, including Universities; Reports and memoranda produced by various Police sections and departments; Internal Police guidelines and methodologies.

Contains correspondence, circulars, telegrams, orders, duty and occurrence books, patrol reports, case dockets, charge sheets, lost and found lists, returns and statements.
Subjects are poll and dog tax, stock disease and theft, crime, registration of voters, agricultural census and the administration of the police at Van Reenen.

The photographs were taken by the police during the June 1976 Uprising.Helena Pohlandt-McCormick, who compiled this collection later published these images and documents in a book with the title "'I Saw a Nightmare...' Doing Violence to memory: The Soweto Uprising, June 16, 1976", published by Columbia University Press, and electronically available under www.gutenberg-e.org/pohlandt-mccormick/index.html. (Please note that Historical Papers cannot guarantee this link).