Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1960s-2000s (Creation)
Level of description
Fonds
Extent and medium
13 boxes including documents, photographs, awards, 10 CDs and 14 floppy disks
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Achmat Dangor, born in Newclare on 2 October 1948, was a South African writer, poet and political activist against Apartheid.
He worked extensively in the field of development and civil society, 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).
Achmat Dangor was a banned person from 1973 to 1978 by the South African government. He was active on several writers’ bodies advocating the end of segregation such as Black Thoughts, the Writers’ Forum and the Congress of South African Writers (COSAW).
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
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. The collection was handed over to the Nelson Mandela Foundation for further processing and listing. It was subsequently deposited with the Historical Papers Research Archive in September 2023.
Content and structure area
Scope and content
Included are manuscripts, correspondence, awards, journals, diaries, notebooks, newspaper clippings, photographs and artwork, as well as working papers from various institutions, and oral history interviews.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
The collection was sorted by Audrey Elster, and a listing created by the Nelson Mandela Foundation. This order in which the collection was received thereafter was largely retained.
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Conditions governing reproduction
All rights remain with the Achmat Dangor family.
Language of material
Script of material
Language and script notes
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Finding aids
Uploaded finding aid
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Related units of description
Notes area
Note
Photograph with courtesy from the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Alternative identifier(s)
Access points
Subject access points
Place access points
Name access points
Genre access points
Description control area
Description identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation revision deletion
Language(s)
Script(s)
Sources
Archivist's note
The collection is work-in-progress, both in terms of the digitisation of parts of the collection, as well as the oral history interviews which are still ongoing.