News and Updates

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Advocate George Bizos Papers @ Wits

The personal and working papers of Advocate George Bizos, which were donated to Wits University by the Bizos family, following his passing in 2020, are now awaiting processing.

George Bizos, an alumni of Wits University, remains in our minds as one of South Africa's outstanding human rights lawyers. His legal career spans from the 1963 Rivonia Trial, the Steve Biko and Neil Aggett Commissions of Inquiry, to the post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and to the 2012 Marikana Commission of Inquiry. He was one of the architects of South Africa's first democratic Constitution, alongside his long standing colleague Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson amongst many others. As an Advocate he served as Senior Counsel at the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) and was a Board member of the Centre for Applied legal Studies at Wits University.

His papers, which were transferred from his offices at the LRC to Wits Historical Papers, in collaboration with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, will now be processed and described, for which the Library received generous funding from the family of George Bizos. His archive will subsequently be open for engagement and research.

Achmat Dangor Papers @ Wits

The Achmat Dangor Papers are part of the Achmat Dangor Legacy Project (ADLP), an initiative of Audrey Elster, with generous funding from the Ford Foundation. They are now deposited at Historical Papers.

Achmat Dangor was a South African writer, poet and political activist against Apartheid. He worked with institutions such as the Kagiso Trust, the Independent Development Trust (IDT), UNAIDS, the Nelson Mandela Childrens Fund (NMCF) and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. His literary works included poetry collections such as Bulldozer (1983) and Private voices (1992), and novels such as Waiting for Leila (1981), the Z Town Trilogy (1990), Kafka's Curse: Novella & Three Other Stories (1997), Bitter Fruit (2001), Strange Pilgrimages (2013) and Dikeledi: Child of Tears No More (2017).

The Achmat Dangor Papers include his manuscripts, correspondence, awards, journals, diaries, notebooks, newspaper clippings, photographs and artwork, as well as working papers from various institutions, and oral history interviews. They are presently being digitised by the Nelson Mandela Foundation.