Bongeka Buhle Hlengwa

Biography

Bongeka is a supervisor in a unit called Documents and Services, under Information and Knowledge Management Directorate at the Gauteng Provincial Legislature. This Unit has four sub-units and one of them deals with archiving documents produced by the legislature.

Her responsibility is to ensure that that those documents, which are produced every day, are archived systematically both manually and electronically.

In that sub-unit, she uses her document classification skills, documenting skills as well as paper conservation skills. Even though she does not physically work at the archive, she supervises and advises the institution’s Records Management Officers.

She is also a partner/driver of an initiative towards a paperless Gauteng Legislature, where everything will be scanned, saved and retrieved electronically.

Previously as Heritage Officer: Museum & Principal Language Practitioner, her key responsibility were to ensure that all Bills and Laws passed were available in all 4 official languages of the Gauteng Province (isiZulu, Sepedi, Afrikaans & English). She also worked to promote culture, ensure that the laws of the province were widely known and adhered to and to ensure that African languages did not become extinct.

At the British Museum
During her time on the International Training Programme in 2006, Bongeka was based in the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas and her partner placement was at Lincoln Museum in Lincolnshire.

Legacy Projects
In March 2010 Bongeka attended the Cairo Conference Towards a global network, where she presented a paper on what she had gained, both professionally and personally, from attending the ITP and her career development since the programme.