1 Ebrahim, Hassen The Soul of a Nation: Constitution-making in South Africa 1998 Oxford University Press Cape Town pages 179–180, The full text of the book is now available online at http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/sources/soul-of-nation-constitution/chapter1-6.htm. See also the Annual Report of the Constitutional Assembly May 1994 – May 1995 available at: http://www.polity.co.za/html/govdocs/constitution/ca/ANREPORT/Ca94_95.pdf.Google Scholar

2 The Constitutional Assembly was usually shortened to CA. In the archives of the CA secretariat there should be a letter from the Secretary of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants complaining that section 1 of the Chartered Accountants Designation (Private) Act 67 of 1993 reserved the abbreviation ‘C.A.’ to members of the Institute and made its use by any other body a criminal offence.Google Scholar

3 Gopher is an Internet protocol for locating and retrieving documents. It was released in 1991 and was popular until more versatile Web applications became available.Google Scholar

4 The ‘Web’ is so much a part of modern information management that it is easy to forget how recent it is. Tim Berners-Lee is credited with having invented the technology the Web uses in 1989 but it took time for people to appreciate its potential. The first Web search engine, for example, Lycos, dated from 1993 and the World Wide Web Consortium was only founded in October 1994.Google Scholar

5 At the time there was no other product supported in South African able to do the same job.Google Scholar

6 The Project was based in the Department of Roman and Comparative Law. At that time, the writer was head of the Department and the Department was responsible for Information Technology in the Law Faculty. The departmental administrator, Mrs. Barbara Bergé, watched over the Project's accounts and was able to correct many erroneous postings in the University's accounting system.Google Scholar

7 Although both Verity and Excel gave a 10% discount, the Topic server software, WWW server and a single fixed retrieval client licence cost R139 537. The computer was a gift but additional memory and disk space cost R26 642. The market cost of the software and hardware need for the project was in the region of R300 000. This was more than twice the 1995 gross annual salary of a law professor at the University of Cape Town.Google Scholar

8 They were assisted in 1995 by Sharon Lamb and Heidi Stegman, final year LLB students in the Law Faculty.Google Scholar

9 Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 200 of 1993.Google Scholar

10 These pre-1994 negotiations are the subject of a number of studies. See the readings given by the Centre for Conflict Resolution and the Media Peace Centre at http://www.ccr.uct.ac.za/archive/two/11_3/reading.html Google Scholar

11 There were many other initiatives to publicise the work of the Constitutional Assembly including a newspaper Constitutional Talk and a popular show on national television with the same name hosted by Professors Mandla Mchunu and Dennis Davis.Google Scholar

12 The Sun press release dated 26 June 1995 is still available at http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/1995-06/sunflash.950626.8191.xml. This was a good example of the public-private cooperation that South Africa tries to encourage.Google Scholar

13 Project staff commented on the large proportion of hits from users from the ‘.mil’ domain.Google Scholar

14 The writer was asked by the Western Cape Provincial Archives to help with putting the material in order before it was sent on to the National Archives in Pretoria. The material looked as if it had been dumped off the back of a truck. Papers, files and boxes of 3½″ disks were in a heap on the floor of a large room.Google Scholar

15 The material can be consulted, but is not available for loan. An index is available at: http://www.lib.uct.ac.za/mss/index.php?html=/mss/newaids/BC1114.HTM&msscollid=381 Google Scholar

16 It seems there was no backup of the other material on the website, such as the site logs.Google Scholar

17 No record, unfortunately, has been kept of these enquiries.Google Scholar

18 The material in the CA Database would complement the material available, for example, in the UWC-Robben Island Mayibuye Archives. See http://www.robbenisland.org.za/departments/heritage/mayibuye/mayibuye.asp Google Scholar

19 The materials on the Database should be at least as important for understanding South Africa's Constitution as the Federalist Papers are for understanding the United States Constitution.Google Scholar

20 In Pepper v Hart [1993] 1 All ER 42 (HL) the House of Lords changed this rule, but in South Africa the Supreme Court of Appeal in Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association v Price Waterhouse 2001 (4) SA 551 (SCA) (Marais JA, Farlam JA, Brand AJA) at 604 paragraph 25 declined to say whether the decision in Pepper v Hart applied in South African law.Google Scholar

21 S v Makwanyane and Another 1995 (3) SA 391 (CC) at 405 paragraph 17.Google Scholar

22 The closest a court appears to have come to referring to the travaux préparatoires is an unreported case, Nompumza and others v S [1998] JOL 4181 (Ck) page 3, in which White, J, quoted the following passage from Chapter 27 of the Constitutional Law of South Africa Matthew Chaskalson and others editors, 1996 Juta, Cape Town which justified a particular interpretation of section 35(1)(f) of the Constitution in these words: “The travaux preparatoires, for one thing, indicate clearly that the mischief aimed at was the view ….”Google Scholar

23 Minister of Home Affairs and Another v Fourie and Another (Doctors for Life International and Others, Amici Curiae); Lesbian and Gay Equality Project and Others v Minister of Home Affairs and Others 2006 (1) SA 524 (CC).Google Scholar

24 The library of the Constitutional Court, for example, does not have a full collection of this material.Google Scholar

25 The Department of Roman and Comparative Law had disappeared as part of institutional restructuring and the writer had moved to the Department of Commercial Law and ceased to be responsible for information technology in the Law Faculty.Google Scholar

26 There are, presumably, corresponding disadvantages when the resource proves unusable.Google Scholar

27 The Law Faculty's IT Committee, for example, had planned to convert the documentation in the Database into a modern format. This, as experience with two CD versions has shown, would not have made the Database more accessible. Laureen Rushby, more constructively, has been using spare capacity in the Government Publications Library to index the documents using an Excel spreadsheet.Google Scholar

28 The writer has proposed that the Law Faculty and the Government Publications Library collaborate rebuild the Database in a way that will take into account the recommendations in this paper.Google Scholar

29 It is unlikely that the South African government would object to any responsible attempt to resurrect the Database. It would be possible to apply to the officer appointed by the State President for the purposes in terms of section 5(6) of the Copy Act for permission to use material in which copyright vests in the state.Google Scholar

30 Copyright Act 98 of 1978. What follows assumes that the Constitutional Assembly qualifies, for the purposes of the Interpretation Act, as the state.Google Scholar

31 Section 5(6) reads: “Copyright which vests in the state shall for administrative purposes be deemed to vest in such officer in the public service as may be designated by the State President by proclamation in the Gazette.”Google Scholar

32 The Constitutional Assembly was established by Chapter 5 (sections 68–74) of the Interim Constitution.Google Scholar

33 See footnote 1.Google Scholar

34 http://pubs.cs.uct.ac.za/ Google Scholar

35 http://lawspace.law.uct.ac.za/ Google Scholar

36 http://www.greenstone.org/cgi-bin/library Google Scholar

37 http://www.austlii.edu.au/ Google Scholar

38 http://www.saflii.org/ Google Scholar