Digital Innovation South Africa DISA

History and Founding

Digital Innovation South Africa (DISA) was initiated through a workshop organised by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation at the University of the Witwatersrand in September 1997. Funded by the Foundation in 1998, DISA was the first library and archive project in South Africa to be undertaken on a national rather than a local or institutional level. The first phase of the project, entitled South Africa's Struggle for Democracy: Anti-Apartheid Periodicals, 1960–1994, digitised 45 anti-apartheid journals covering the period from the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 through the first democratic elections in 1994. A second phase expanded the collection under the title Southern African Freedom Struggles, c.1950–1994. The project is hosted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN).

Collections and Holdings

DISA is an open-access digital archive focusing on the socio-political history of South Africa, with particular emphasis on the anti-apartheid freedom struggle from approximately 1950 to 1994. Collections are drawn from partner institutions across South Africa and include the Alan Paton Centre and Struggle Archives, the Campbell Collections, the Centre for African Literary Studies, the Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Centre, and Indigenous Knowledge Systems materials. The archive holds affidavits, articles, biographies, briefs, circulars, conference papers, constitutions, letters, oral histories, resolutions, posters, trial documents, and videos.

Notable Materials

Among the most significant holdings are digitised volumes of the Rivonia Trial records, evidence from the State vs. Nelson Mandela case, materials from the Alan Paton Centre relating to the Liberal Party, and 45 anti-apartheid periodicals including FOSATU Worker News, Sash, Grassroots, and the African Communist. The archive is a premier resource for journalism and media research, as many of the included periodicals were clandestine publications of limited distribution.

Access and Usage

DISA is freely accessible online at disa.ukzn.ac.za, with no login required to browse or search collections. Users can filter by document type or browse within specific institutional collections. The archive plays a national role in promoting internationally acceptable standards for digital imaging, metadata, and retrieval.