The Acting Director at the National Archives, Sibongile Dube, says that preserving national documents is the government’s biggest problem — and one shared by most third-world countries.
Dube was speaking during the Eswatini National Archives and Records Service (ENARS) Preservation Policy Stakeholders Consultation Workshop, held at the Happy Valley Hotel in Ezulwini.
She noted that priceless national documents are often overlooked until they are urgently needed. “The reality is national documents are priceless; however, their safe storage is often overlooked,” she said. “At the National Archives, we have important documentation, like a copy of the Times of Eswatini dated 1910. If that document is lost, it will never be replaced. The truth is document preservation is the government’s biggest problem — and unfortunately it is a big problem in most third world countries.”
Also speaking at the event was the Under Secretary (US) at the Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology (ICT), Macanjana Motsa, who said that document preservation was becoming tougher by the day.
“The exponential growth of digital records has become overwhelming for many governments,” Motsa noted. “For countries like ours, the resources, infrastructure, and skills required to safeguard information assets often lag behind the speed of technological change. This gap puts both our physical and digital records at risk.”
Motsa added that the situation was made worse by the fragility of digital formats and the looming threat of technological obsolescence. “Files created today may become unreadable in a few years unless active preservation strategies are in place. Many developing countries are simply not prepared for this, and that is the danger,” she said.
Motsa stressed that preservation should not be seen as a technical afterthought, but as a central part of national governance. “When information is lost, governments lose their memory. We lose continuity, we lose accountability, and we undermine democracy,” she said.
Motsa added that Eswatini’s challenge is mirrored across the developing world, where financial constraints, weak institutional frameworks, and competing national priorities often delay investment in preservation. “It is not a matter of lack of will, but often a matter of limited resources. Yet the cost of neglecting preservation is far higher — it robs nations of identity and deprives citizens of access to vital information.”
Motsa concluded by pointing out that the ENARS Preservation Policy is intended to help Eswatini break this cycle by creating frameworks that are proactive rather than reactive. “The idea is to ensure that we do not just respond to loss of documents after it happens but put systems in place that prevent it,” she said.