Openining address by Prof. Phillip Bonner: "Fragmentation and Cohesion In The Anc, The First 70 Years".
Delegates at the 3-day conference “100 years of the ANC, Debating Liberation Histories and Democracy Today”, held last week in Johannesburg, declared the conference a great success. This was the first major public event marking the 100th Anniversary of the ANC. It was jointly organised by SAHO and the history departments at the University of Witwatersrand and the University of Johannesburg.
The conference attracted leading international and local historians, trade unionists, liberation movement veterans and key SACP and ANC theorists. The papers and subsequent panel discussions enticed lively debate, identified new avenues for research and opened up new partnerships and collaborative opportunities between history projects like SAHO's and academic institutions around the world.
Two of SAHO's latest publications were launched at the conference namely; "The Final Prize, My life in the Anti Apartheid Struggle" by Norman Levy and "Alex Hepple South African Socialist" by Bob Hepple. Both are part of SAHO's “Lives Of Courage” series. SAHO is planning two other conferences for 2012 - one on the history of the Women’s movement and the other on Culture and the Freedom struggle.
