South Africa: Declassified - Apartheid Profits - Who Funded the National Party?

analysis

While researching the recently published book Apartheid, Guns and Money: A Tale of Profit, Open Secrets collected approximately 40,000 archival documents from 25 archives in seven countries. This treasure trove contains damning details of the individuals and corporations that propped up apartheid and profited in return. Many of these documents were kept secret until now. Most remain hidden despite South Africa's transition to democracy. OPEN SECRETS believes that it is vital to allow the public to scrutinise the primary evidence. Here we invite you behind the scenes to look at the documents that informed the book.

The Archive for Contemporary Affairs, a four-storey brown facebrick building at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, is an unassuming place. Yet its 3.5km long shelves of files contain some of the shadiest secrets from South Africa's past. Many of the National Party's (NP) most prominent politicians sent their collections, including official NP documents, to this archive. There is no longer a National Party, and it is unclear whether anyone really wants to "own" this memory of oppression that delivered so much paperwork. It is nonetheless a national treasure worthy of far more attention by researchers from across the country.

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