festival
Blacks don't read, according to a prominent African journalist. So how
can such an event survive?
David Smith Africa correspondent
Saturday September 11 2010
guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/10/book-festival-johannesburg-david-smith
"It's a fact," pronounced the read-me headline, "Darkies just don't
read."
Provocative? An understatement. Sihle Khumalo's column [http://
www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article95949.ece" title="] in the
Sunday Times of South Africa last year said bluntly: "Go to any black
household and you will find lots of music tapes, LPs, CDs and DVDs and
a handful, if any, of general books. That, by the way, includes blacks
in the suburbs. The lack of reading is a black thing, irrespective of
where you live. It is way more fashionable to have loads of music than
to be truly knowledgeable."
Khumalo noted that the only general bookshop in Soweto, the country's
biggest black township, had closed down because of lack of custom.
The theme was taken up by the newspaper the Sowetan [http://
www.sowetanlive.co.za/?gclid=CIGp2s_o_KMCFYKY2AodmmRbHg" title="],
which told the story of an ambassador who visited a Soweto school and
hid a 100-rand note in a novel to see if anybody would find it. Four
months later he went back and found the money exactly where he left
it. The book had not been opened.
So South Africa, where illiteracy runs high, stands accused of a
deeply unliterary culture. Stephen Johnson, managing director of
publisher Random House Struik, told the Mail & Guardian: "Books
and reading are simply not on the national agenda at all. It's
shameful."
It doesn't sound like fertile soil for a literary festival. In
Britain, these are now all the rage: barely a town or village is
untouched by the invasion of wind-blown marquees, plastic chairs and
superstar authors expected to prove as captivating in person as on the
page. I have fond memories of Bill Deedes, Christopher Hitchens, John
Pilger and John Updike at Hay-on-Wye and Martin Amis, Michael Frayn
and Stephen Fry at Cheltenham.
Yet South Africa has well-established book festivals in Cape Town and
Franschhoek. Last weekend, after more than a decade in mothballs, the
Mail & Guardian resurrected its version [http://www.mg.co.za/
specialreport/mg-jhb-literary-festival-2010" title="] in Johannesburg.
The venue was 44 Stanley Avenue, a maze of old warehouses, workshops
and garages that have been converted into pleasant if self-consciously
trendy boutique shops and restaurants. The main room featured four
antique crystal chandeliers, five dummy chickens perched on the cross-
beam ceiling and an elegant bookcase with no books in it.
The festival theme was Being here now: South Africans in 2010, and
certainly the gaze was inward rather than directed at trends in world
literature. Indeed, it has been argued that much South African writing
remains parochial, a notable exception being Craig Higginson's
determination to "not worry about the local thing" in his novel Last
Summer, set in Stratford-upon-Avon.
But even last weekend, books were not always at centre stage; half of
the eight sessions were more political or media debates. All were
relaxed and conversational. They offered glimpses of a relentlessly
complicated nation attempting to define itself, contest itself and
wrestle with its internal contradictions.
Moeletsi Mbeki, the political economist, admitted he was weary of that
unholy trinity: colonialism, apartheid and racism. "If I never hear
those three words again, I will go to my grave a very happy person
because I think those three words tell us very little about what is
happening in South Africa," he said.
It was remarked that South Africa might be like 19th-century America,
where explosive change played out in ways that no one could discern at
the time.
From the country's crippling public-sector strike, Mbeki, brother of
the former president, Thabo, arrived at a startling proposition: "The
fact civil servants are fighting for justice is a good thing about
South Africa, not a bad thing. America had a civil war and 600,000
died, but it was the only way they could get rid of slavery. How are
we going to get rid of the massive inequality in this country? Do we
need a civil war? We may need it."
Another session marked the 25th anniversary of the Mail & Guardian
itself. I asked if journalists had a kernel of nostalgia for the 1980s
and 90s, when South Africa had an epic narrative - heroic Mandelas and
apartheid villains - and the eyes of the world upon it.
Nic Dawes, the editor, replied: "I suppose I am to a degree envious of
what seems from distance like the moral clarity of that campaign.
That's certainly something that we lack now, when people on all sides
of the story seem to occupy a much more complex spectrum of positions.
But I think that, actually, in some ways, some of that clarity is
returning right now, because the story around governance, corruption
and those sorts of things is acquiring a kind of epic quality. It's
not just a minor nibbling away at the corners of the state any more."
He added: "I do think there's a large narrative developing around the
criminalisation of the state and the scale of assault on basic
governance, which is now very large and very serious. The line between
those who would govern and those who would loot is the difference
between success and failure, so for me that's the kind of epic picture
that we have to look at now."
The following day, questions about identity and indigeneity were at
the centre of debate. Curiously, Rian Malan, arguably the most gifted
non-fiction writer in South Africa today, was relegated to a seat in
the audience and could later be seen pursuing his other artistic
talent, the guitar.
The author Kevin Bloom recalled a Sunday afternoon in Soweto with a
group of volunteers, one of whom opened up about how his mother was
dying from Aids.
Bloom recalled: "We stopped walking and he cried a bit. And then he
looked at me and said, 'When are you going back to your country?' It
remains the most profound thing that has happened to me ever as a
journalist in this country, because I lived 15km away from him and so
much is asked in that question. What is the notion of home? How do we
explain home to ourselves in the context of that question? On the
deepest level, certainly for people of my generation, 'When are you
going back to your country?' is one of the most profound questions
about the concept of home."
Another panellist, the sculptor and writer Pitika Ntuli, treated the
packed room to some poetry from TS Eliot and WB Yeats. One of the
latter's best-known lines has become a firm favourite to describe the
South African condition, possibly with a little help from Chinua
Achebe, and is quoted almost daily in political commentary. Ntuli
recited the stanza in full:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2010
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