PLEXUS#09. GALA, the rainbow archive of South Africa
The GALA Queer Archive (GALA) is a catalyst for the production, preservation and dissemination about the history, culture ans contemporary expericences of LGBTQIA+ people in South Africa. The archive was established as a response to the continued erasure and omission of Sex-Affective and Gender Diversity (SAGD) community history from official museums and archives, even in the wave of new histories and heritage being celebrated and emphasised in post-apartheid 1990s South Africa. The name of the organization was previously known as The Gay and Lesbian Archives of South Africa, from were it got the acronym GALA. In 2007, tha name was changed to its present form.
The institution was founded in 1997 as an offshoot of the South African History Archives (SAHA), created in 1988 by a group of anti-apartheid activists as a non-profit organization and a community archive closely connected to the United Democratic Front (UDF), the Congress of South African Trade Unions (CSATU) and the African National Congress (ANC), three of the main political groups in the fight against apartheid and the recovery of democracy in the country. GALA is hosted, as SAHA, by the Historic Papers Department of the William Cullen Library at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
As an archive founded on principles of social justice and human rights, GALA continues to work towards a greater awareness about the lives and experiences of LGBTIQ+ people in South Africa, and Africa more broadly. Thus their main focus is to preserve and nurture SAGD narratives and culture, as well as promote social equality, inclusive education and youth development. Today, GALA is the custodian of over 200 associations and private archival collections dating back to the 1940s, with archival responsibilities that include the safe storage of historical documents and objects and ensuring that this material is accessible to the public. But GALA also practices archival activism through collecting new material or starting new collections by recording contemporary experiences. In this way, the archive has a publishing line supporting research, operating a community library and holding exhibitions and educational workshops. GALA also has become an editorial agent through Ma’Thokos Books, a rare publishing outlet for LGBTIQ+ writing and scholarly works in the African context.
These are the ways in which GALA incorporates the archive into educational programming aimed at broadening perspectives around SAGD. Complimenting this includes developing resources, furthering internship and training programmes aimed at capacity building for queer youth, and collaborating with civil society organizations on programmes that focus on cross cutting issues.
To know more of GALA we invite you to visit their website and their Wikipedia entry.
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