Stephen Mpofu
Yes, the literary talent lying dormant across Zimbabwe needed promoting yesterday, so that our proud motherland can square its literary shoulders at home and elsewhere in the global village.
The challenge lies with publishers, who should pursue not only the profits that fill their pockets but also a better and prouder literacy record for our country in the wider world we live in.
That, in short, is the greater need for our motherland that this pen drew from a speech by the First Lady, Dr Auxillia Mnangagwa, when she officiated at the launch of a book by young author Josiah Mucheda, entitled Zvamuri Ndaimbova, Zvandiri Muchazova.
The tragedy facing young and talented Zimbabweans today is that some, if not all, private publishing houses decide whether to accept a book by weighing how much profit it will bring them.
Too few also ask what literacy and developmental benefit the book will bring to the nation.
The time is now ripe for that mindset to change, for the sake of budding writers and for the political, economic and social development of our nation.
Our country’s literacy rating, among the highest on the African continent, demands nothing less.
Let us crack a smile, so to speak, for nothing is impossible under the sun, even with the El Niño phenomenon upon us.
An education expert, who prefers to remain anonymous, says a solution exists and is simply waiting to be implemented.
He proposes that the powers that be should establish a State Publishing Board (SPB).
Its task would be to ensure that books which benefit their writers, their publishers and the motherland see the light of day and go on to serve as lamps lighting the way for our social and economic development.
Such a board, he said, would oversee the allocation of manuscripts to suitable publishing houses, along with the financial benefits that follow. In that way, profit mongers would no longer decide which books see the light of day and which do not.
The idea deserves serious attention. Many promising manuscripts sit unread in drawers across the country, not because they lack merit but because they do not promise quick returns.
A board guided by the national interest rather than profit alone would give such work a fair hearing, and would help build a reading culture that matches our high literacy rate. It would also give young authors such as Mucheda the confidence that their work will be judged on its value to readers.
This communicologist speaks from experience. I have authored five published books, two of them secondary school literature setbooks, and three more are on the way.
The crowning one among them was inspired by a visitation from God twenty years ago, in which our Creator told me that He had called one of my sons as “My vessel.”
To this day the young man continues to serve as a vessel for our Lord in the Midlands.
This is confirmed by a song that was popular in the countryside in the early seventies, when this writer was still young.
Elderly women would rise to their feet, their skirts brushing the ground, singing all the while: “Our God’s mouth does not fall down. Yes, our Creator’s mouth does not fall down, as our human mouths”.
The same faith should guide us now. What is spoken in good faith can come to pass, but only if it is followed by deeds.
Our young writers and the State Publishing Board that would serve them deserve more than words. They deserve action.
