The Department of Sport, Arts and Culture through the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa (NARSSA) in partnership with the Oral History Association of South Africa (OHASA), and the KZN Provincial Archives will host the 2024 Annual National Oral History Conference from 07-11 October 2024 at the Emakhosini Conference Centre in Ulundi, KZN Province.
Theme Forgotten Stories and Marginalised Experiences: Thirty Years Later
Sub-themes:
- Exploring new Oral History methodologies in the Forth Industrial Revolution(4IR).
- Techniques, Prospects and Ethics in Oral History practice.
- Oral History in schools.
- Stories of land and land use in rural areas
- Forgotten Stories: Health Provision methods.
- Political violence: Untold stories.
- Visiting the forgotten archived oral testimonies.
- Oral histories of witchcraft and sorcery.
- Religion and orality.
- Dreams and orality.
- Traditions and modernity- forgetting and remembering.
- Orality, democracy and post-1994 political landscape.
- Afrocentrism, decoloniality, forgotten stories and marginalised experiences.
- Women`s voices-30 year in a democracy, before and beyond.
The annual conference aims to bring people together to enable them to share common and unique experiences - past and present for the benefit of National identity, social memory, and heritage. It also aims to assist communities in retrieving neglected indigenous and community knowledge as a way of promoting social, economic, and cultural development. Special attention will also be given to work towards the reconstruction of those aspects of the nation’s memory that is not recorded, preserved, and conserved in the National and Provincial Archives and other relevant institutions and organisations in the country. It will further seek to create an awareness of the value of oral history and oral traditions within the nation through the media and the arts, to record, preserve and conserve data in the indigenous languages and to facilitate interdepartmental synergies and partnerships with other stakeholders to ensure that oral history is integrated in all public initiatives.
The Oral History Conference has a schools’ learners programme, which entails training Grade 10 -11 History learners on oral history collection, methodologies, and presentation skills. The programme empowers and prepares identified learners to present their findings during Annual Oral History Conferences. Learners are identified by the Provincial Archives in partnership with the Provincial Department of Basic Education for the training.
