Department of Sociology, University of the Free State

by Dr Mosa Phadi (University of the Free State )

Friday 11 Jun 2021, 12:00 → 14:00 Africa/Johannesburg

From the Vault: The Bureau of African Affairs (BAA) and South Africa’s Liberation Struggle - beyond the ANC & PAC
Mosa Phadi
UFS
The article seeks to expand scholarship on the relationship between the Bureau of African Affairs and the South African liberation struggle, showing that the Bureau provided more than just military and financial resources. It will highlight how the Bureau took an interest in a much wider spectrum of issues. While the article will add to the current literature and explore the Pan Africanist Congress/African National Congress relationship with the Bureau, it will move beyond a narrow framing which situates the BAA as merely a source of financial aid to these liberation movements. It will demonstrate that the Bureau also played an ideological and administrative support to some of the parties. Secondly, it will give an in-depth account of the information the Bureau collected on South African organisations and individuals. These archives are the ‘imperfect witness to the past’ of South African liberation history that has hardly been explored.