This weekend is a unique time to look back over 20 years of democracy in South Africa, and if you want to see just how far we’ve come you you need look no further than YouTube.

British Pathé, an archiving organisation that calls itself “the world’s leading multimedia resource with a history stretching back over a century” released its entire catalogue of Newsreel clips – some 85 000 – to Google’s video-sharing site earlier this month.

If you’re not old enough to remember Newsreel clips, they were a part of every cinema show’s pre-show preamble between the 50s and 70s in South Africa. My mom told me she remembers that Pathé’s Newsreel clips were the only way of getting “moving news” back when she was young, the rest of the time all they had was radio. The actual Pathe collection goes back to the 1920s.

The clips are – obviously – shot from a British perspective and are an important historical record not just of the events of the first part of the 20th Century, but attitudes too. There’s features about flappers, fighters and the birth of modern travel, to name but a few.

And, of course, given the historical links between the UK and SA, there’s quite a treasure trove of features about our beloved country. The browsing I’ve done has unearthed videos of SA’s involvement in World War II, olden-day footage of cricket and rugby matches, the birth of the republic and the tightening of Apartheid – and much more between 1926 and the mid-sixties.

It’s all really quite interesting, but even if your interests don’t lie down that path if nothing else these clips will make you very grateful that in 2014, your access to and the quality of information is far, far superior in every way.

Here are five videos to get you started:

A royal visit:

An Australia vs. South Africa cricket game in Johannesburg:

The Springboks play Australia in Sydney:

A soap box derby from 1937, long before the days of the Red Bull-sponsored high-tech derbies of today:

And if you thought the Brits were all supportive of apartheid back in the day, prepare to be surprised by this gem that clearly shows they weren’t. This was shot in the wake of the attempted assassination of Dr Hendrik Verwoerd in 1960, but probably never saw the light of day in apartheid-era South Africa due to the slight undertone of disapproval:

If you’d like to go through the archive yourself, head over to Pathé’s YouTube channel for more videos, or to their main website if you’re looking for historic videos that are less focused on South Africa.