The Unboxing Mayibuye – Access to Digital Heritage Project was launched by the Robben Island Museum (RIM) this week. RIM has partnered with the French National Audiovisual Institute on the project, which is being funded by Agence Française de Développement.
The project intends to initiate and establish the framework for the digital preservation of the Mayibuye Archives and provide improved access to some collections over the next three years.
It will allow the archives to reach to wider audiences, ensuring that the voices of the past are never silenced, and keeping the traces and testimonies of the South African anti- colonial and anti-apartheid struggles alive both in South Africa and globally.
A selection of material from two of the archive’s iconic collections will be digitised and made accessible within the framework of cultural, scientific and educational activities.
The first collection, the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) collection was established in 1956 and sent to South Africa from London in 1990. IDAF provided legal and social support to anti-apartheid activists and their families and launched ongoing international campaigns against the SA Nationalist apartheid regime.
The second iconic collection, known as the Apple Box Archives, but officially recorded as the Robben Island Political Prisoners Recreational Committee, contains the collection of documents and artefacts donated by former Robben Island political prisoners after their release in 1991.
