Planact started in 1985 as a voluntary organisation in response to a situation in which professionals and academics were being approached by community groups for assistance on problems of housing and development.

The commitment was to pool resources and provide services to community groups and trade unions that did not have easy access to expertise and resources.

Planacts' members included architects, engineers, planners, lawyers, sociologists and people with organisational and administrative experience.

Planact is a funded non-profit organisation working in the field of housing, local government and urban development. Its principal object is to provide technical, professional and organisational skills and assistance to communities adversely affected by state planning, apartheid policies and economic inequalities.

Planact works in the following areas:

Housing

Land

Services - provision of bulk infrastructure such as water, sanitation, roads and refuse- community services such as health and educational facilities

Local Government

Local Economic Development

Planact has been one of the most successful NGOs during the dying days of apartheid. This is evident in the number of local and national campaigns that Planact played a supportive role, and the volume of material to be found in this collection.

Planact's growth and expansion has been phenomenal. In 1986 Planact had only two full time staff members, and by 1992 there were over forty full-time staff members.

After the first democratic election in 1994, many of the Planact staff members resigned to take up key positions in the newly formed democratic government both at the national, provincial and local level.

The funding scenario also changed during this period. Many of the International Donors who had funded Planact directly, now channelled the money to the democratic government through bilateral and multi-lateral agreements.

This necessitated a rethinking and restructuring of Planact by 1995.

This led to a scaling down and refocusing of Planact activity.

Planact needed to develop relationships with the newly emerging local government entities by assisting with change management & transformation.

But at the same time also maintaining links with civil society through development projects.

Tolstoy Farm, also known as Satyagrahi Farm, was the Transvaal home of Mahatma Gandhi. It is situated 35km South-West of Johannesburg. This 1100-acre farm was a gift from a follower of the Satyagraha movement and was intended as a base for the families of those who were unemployed or in jail because of their political activities. However, it grew far beyond the Transvaal and became an experiment in community living. The Transvaal Gandhi Centenary Council now owns the farm and there are plans for its restoration.

Jeanette Schoon and her three-year-old daughter, Katryn, were killed in 1984 in Lubango, Angola by a letter bomb. Both Jeanette and her husband, Marius, had been involved with African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party (SACP) activities in South Africa, Botswana and Angola. Members of the South African Security Forces orchestrated the attack.

This conference, held in Harare, Zimbabwe, from 24-27 September 1987, under the auspices of the Bishop Ambrose Reeves Trust, was convened by the Rt. Rev. Trevor Huddleston C.R. The conference sought to analyse the problems facing children in apartheid South Africa, expose the full extent of these problems, achieve an understanding of their difficulties and focus international attention on the crisis confronting the youth. The central issues were the State of Emergency, the arrest and detention of children and children's role in the struggle against apartheid.

The Congress of South African Students is a national organisation established in Pietermaritzburg in 1979. COSAS' aim was to co-ordinate student activities in different regions and to unite all students against discrimination in education. COSAS strove for a dynamic free and compulsory education for all, for a spirit of co-operation and trust between students, parents and teachers and for a spirit of trust and companionship between students.

WOSA was launched in April 1990 as a national organisation. It is opposed to racism, tribalism and sexism and supports Socialism, leadership of the black working class, accountability and democracy. It was felt that an organisation was needed that could raise workers' issues without being aligned to any political parties (the example of the ANC/SACP Alliance was used). The issues that WOSA deals with relate to working conditions, wages, unemployment, housing, education, health and transport.

This collection contains slides of some of the material collected for the exhibition "Art, culture and social reality – The Indian community in the Transvaal" which formed part of the 1991 Wits Spring Festival. It also contains a poster on the 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign (in Gujarat).

This collection was donated by Khalik Mayet, who acted as the deputy legal advisor to the Transitional Executive Council between 1993 (when the TEC came into operation) up until the end of April 1994.

He was also an executive member of the TIC (Transvaal Indian Congress).

In the latter capacity he was a delegate to the multi - party negotiations which took place at Kempton Park in the run - up to South Africa's first democratic elections.

Khalik Mayet was born in Johannesburg where he completed his schooling, and then went on to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) where he studied for a degree in law. He played an active role in student politics while studying at Wits. He was an activist in the Transvaal Indian Congress and the African National Congress.

The TIC was formed at the turn of the 20th century by Mahatma Gandhi.

The TIC was not banned following in the wake of Sharpeville but it was severely affected by the hard repression of the period.

Many of it's leaders were either banned, imprisoned or went into exile.

By the mid - 60's the activities of the TIC had declined and by the early seventies it was virtually non - existent.

This was also the period of the rise and popularity of Black Consciousness, and the young activists in the Indian Community were involved in new organisations such as SASO, BCP, and SASM.

The Transitional executive council was established by section 2 of the Transitional executive council act 1993. It was to be established in consequence of agreements reached in the forum and the resultant transitional legislation. The TEC was responsible for the voting period during the election, as well as the hours during which the voting took place.

The committees proposed a higher code setting out the guiding principles which ensured free and fair elections and for machinery which were enforced for these principles, backed by an electoral tribune to redress irregularities effectively.

On the 14 July 1993, the Technical committee for the repeal of discriminatory legislation and free and fair elections met with respectively, the committees for the Transitional executive council.

The independent electoral commission, and the committee for Fundamental rights during transition.

The overlap and potential

Overlap of areas dealt with by the committees were discussed.

The TEC functioned as an institution independent of and separate from the state, the government, the local council or and subordinate Ministry, local authority, sub council, department or organ thereof.

Alliances were formed with the S.A.Government, and there were behind the scenes legal challenges to halt certain decisions, by amongst others the Inkatha Freedom Party. The TEC was also responsible for the income and expenditure in respect of the state electoral fund and the commission reported directly to the TEC regarding this matter.

TIC - Transvaal Indian Congress

TEC - Transitional Executive Council

Jean de la Harpe was an anti-apartheid activist in the 1980s. She was involved in administrative work for the United Democratic Front (UDF), an organisation often viewed as the internal wing of the African National Congress (ANC). De la Harpe also prepared funding proposals, budgets, and reports for funders. She equally wrote annual reports and prepared much of the UDF's resource material. Her fundraising skills were also used during campaigns within the ANC, once the party was unbanned.

The Centre for Conflict Resolution, formerly known as the Centre for Intergroup Studies, is an independent non-profit organisation founded in 1968 by the University of Cape Town. Based in Cape Town, it works nationally and elsewhere in Africa to fulfil its mission:

To contribute towards a just and sustainable peace in South Africa and other African countries by promoting Constructive, creative and co-operative approaches to the resolution of conflict and the reduction of violence

The Centre engages in training, mediation, facilitation, crisis intervention, peace, education and research in pursuit of the following goals:

To provide third party assistance in the resolution of community and political conflicts.

To equip and empower individuals and groups with the skills to settle community conflicts in a constructive manner.

To participate in national and regional peace initiatives.

To promote public awareness of the value and practice of constructive conflict resolution

To contribute towards an understanding of conflict and violence.

To contribute to the transformation of South African society and its institutions by promoting democratic values.

To promote disarmament and demilitarisation in South And Southern Africa.

The CBW Project was launched in April 1999 and continued through 2002.

In general terms, the project aimed to deepen understanding of the creation, development and implementation of the apartheid era CBW programme; and to contribute to, and strengthen, international efforts to prevent the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons.

The research project was managed by the Centre for Conflict Resolution, whose Executive Director, Laurie Nathan and Project Co-ordinator, Guy Lamb provided the support necessary for the work.

Chandre Gould was the project's sole researcher.

A purpose of the project was to document thoroughly and further extend Revelations made at South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings on the chemical and biological warfare programme and briefly report on the final Truth and Reconciliation Commission submission to the people of South Africa.

The project made available a number of products intended to provide an overview of the SA CBW program and to assist future researchers to access documents pertaining to the programme.

The products include a database of publicly available military documents and documents from the CBW programme's front companies; approved transcripts of interviews conducted; background articles pertaining to chemical and biological warfare; press reports; exhibits in the trial of Wouter Basson(former head of SA's CBW programme) and academic journal articles.

In the latter part of 1999 the trial of Wouter Basson began at the High Court in Pretoria, South Africa. Dr Basson was charged by the state with a number of crimes related to South Africa's CBW programme. The trial continued throughout 2001 and into 2002.

An important part of the work of this project was to monitor this trial and linking information revealed in the trial with that already known. New evidence and inconsistencies in the evidence presented were identified. Weekly reports of the trial were prepared and distributed electronically.

These weekly reports were published on the CCR website, the Freedom of Expression Institute web site, and the Quarterly Journal of the Harvard Sussex Programme on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation: The CBW Conventions Bulletin.

The project had the following goals:

To organise and present the information gathered by the TRC investigators.

To collect new information through, inter alia, interviews, workshops and the study and analysis of official documents.

To provide an analysis of the history, origins, structures, organisational links, chain of authority, procurement networks and international support that made the CBW programme possible. Special attention was to be paid to how the programme was managed by and integrated (or otherwise) into the military.

To analyse and report on the products of the programme; the operations Conducted; the human rights violations that resulted; and certain unresolved questions.

To ascertain whether South African agents assisted other countries in developing CBW programmes.

To formulate recommendations of general international applicability in respect of ethical considerations; legal matters; professional conduct by doctors, scientists and others; public education; and national and international CBW control regimes.

To monitor and report on the trial of Wouter Basson.

To provide opportunities for a young black researcher to build his/her capacity, skills and knowledge by working with an experienced research team.

To disseminate the reports, databases and other information produced by the research team via the CCR website.

To prepare and edit the daily and weekly trial reports for publication as a book or monograph.

To conduct an international workshop at which the research results will be Presented to local experts and the project's international advisory panel.

To publish a monograph of the research results in collaboration with the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).

To conduct a workshop for scientists and technicians who were part of the CBW programme in order to examine the ethical difficulties they faced during and after their involvement.

To produce a Track Two occasional paper about the findings emanating from this workshop.

To produce additional papers for publication in medical or scientific journals.