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This paper describes the challenges faced by the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in bringing First World technology to the Third World that still exists in rural and much of urban southern Africa. Although SunSITE technology is simply that of a World Wide Web server or FTP site, opportunities are now ripe for Wits to place some of its priceless academic resources within reach of the community at large. The story of the Taung skull discovery and subsequent important anthropological discoveries around the Sterkfontein caves is just one example of what has essentially been ‘hidden’ at Wits for years. Additional academic expertise in areas such as constitutional law or primary health care delivery can now also be shared, and will be of considerable benefit to those responsible for implementing Reconstruction and Development Programmes (RDP). As South Africa once more resumes its rightful place in the family of nations, SunSITE Africa will be able to provide Africa north of the Limpopo, as well as the rest of the world, with readily‐accessible information and research unique to this country but long hidden behind the barriers of sanctions and apartheid.

Black Southern African librarians have, up to now, shied away from contact with their white counterparts in South Africa. Who could blame them for this, when the South African Library Association (SALA), in the early 1960s, deliberately closed its doors to black members? Black librarians formed their own association, the Bantu Library Association, which later became the African Library Association of South Africa (ALASA). Even though SALA re‐opened its membership to all races after it became the South African Institute of Librarianship and Information Science (SAILIS), in 1980, ALASA has continued to operate independently, and very few of its members actually attend the annual SAILIS conferences.