Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
The Mafela Trust organisation was established in 1989 by a group of freedom fighters of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) to research and document the political and military activities of ZAPU and its armed wing, the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZPRA), during the liberation war in Zimbabwe. Records pertaining to ZAPU and ZPRA history, including war records, were confiscated by the government-led Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) in 1982 during the post-independence struggle, and never returned.
In the absence of a documented history, the Mafela Trust has been guided by their mission statement "When you go home tell them of us and say for your tomorrow we gave our today", to launch numerous national projects in an attempt to recoup what has been lost. Most notable of these projects are the 'Fallen Heroes' project - an identification and commemoration of those who died during the liberation war, and the ‘War Graves’ project – the location and subsequent exhumation of war graves. Further research and oral history projects bear testament to the Mafela Trust's determination to recover the ZAPU/ZPRA history, including documenting the history around the formal alliance with Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC).
The materials produced as part of these projects form the bulk of the Mafela Trust collection at SAHA and include paper-based and digital materials, photographs, oral history interviews and video material. These materials were identified as endangered in the course of a research, digitisation and oral history project conducted by SAHA in 2010 and 2011, and the materials were relocated to Johannesburg in 2011 for comprehensive archival processing. A selection of materials in this collection has been digitised.
ANC - African National Congress
MK - Umkhonto we Sizwe
MOU - Memorandum of Understanding
MWHA - Matopo World Heritage Area
RSA - Republic of South Africa
ZANU - Zimbabwe African National Union
ZAPU - Zimbabwe African People's Union
ZPRA - Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army