New Archives Centre will keep our history safe
The opening of the Gauteng Archives Centre will benefit our future generations.
The new state of the art R350 million Gauteng Archive Centre opened in October in Kagiso.
This centre will in future be used by schools, hospitals, municipalities, police, courts, heritage and historical entities from Gauteng to access and store important records and information.
“The facility will help us preserve societal memorabilia of historical value of Gauteng and it’s people. It will store official public documents that are 20 years or older from various entities including government, NGOs, and learning and research institutions. This will eliminate cases of distorted history told by different people from different angles,” said Gauteng Premier, David Makhura.
The centre has been in operation since 2017 and has already received records and information from departments like the Sedibeng District Municipality, Emfuleni Municipality, City of Johannesburg, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Transport, Sport, Arts and Culture, and Recreation.
The facility will be a treasure house of information, and will include school registers, court records, deeds, building plans, births, marriages, divorces, wills, land claims, Truth and Reconciliation records, medical records and municipal records to name but a few.
Despite Gauteng being the last to build an Archives Centre, it is among the few currently in operation.
“Gauteng is investing rigorously in infrastructure and in transforming townships, with about R40 million already spent in building and upgrading schools, libraries, clinics, roads and this very Archive Centre,” said Makhura.
The centre has 26 staff members, 14 of whom are from Kagiso, but when the centre is in full operation it will have 40 staff members including archivists, administrators and technologists. It will be open on weekdays from 8am to 5pm, will offer free WiFi and be fully digitised.
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