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Perspective Stephen Mpofu
Zimbabwe is rated the most literate nation in Africa, yet the production of local literature falls far short of sustaining that reputation.
Indeed, one might be forgiven for suggesting that the dearth in works by locals belies the country’s 90 percent literacy rating ahead of Equatorial Guinea and South Africa in that order.
Perhaps Professor Musaemura Zimunya, a university lecturer and chairman of the executive board of the Zimbabwe International Book Fair and a writer of note himself, summed up the unappetising writers scroll when he said three days ago:
“The publishing industry is in distress.”
Prof Zimunya said instead of taking drastic action to improve the ailing publishing industry, the now defunct Government of National Unity, or popularly known as the Inclusive Government, succeeded only in “putting money in some people’s pockets.”
While welcoming an announcement by Primary and Secondary Education Minister Lazarus Dokora earlier this week to the effect that the Government would revive the Literature Bureau, Prof Zimunya however said he did not believe the move would go a long way in boosting the production of books of diverse literary dimensions, while publishing houses remained cash-scrapped.
Launched in 1953 especially to produce literature in indigenous languages, the Literature Bureau was disbanded in 1999 and will go down in history as having done a great deal in discovering and nurturing writing talent among locals.
In the intervening period, the country has been inundated with books by foreign writers and whose content bore alien cultural values so much so that Zimbabwean minds and tongues have been contaminated by some of the books written in the language of our former colonisers.
You need only to listen to some children, even adults speaking in Shona or SiNdebele to discover the extent of the harm caused. This is because it is almost impossible for Zimbabweans to motivate a conversation or discussion to the end in their mother tongue without breaking down and summoning the English language to the rescue.
As anyone should know, language is an embodiment of cultural values and so a strange language bearing alien cultural values does incalculable damage on indigenous cultures when superimposing itself on indigenous languages.
In his announcement in Harare, Minister Dokora said the revival of the Literature Bureau would help revive the writing of books with a local and Pan-African content.
The bureau’s resurrection will undoubtedly help cleanse contaminated tongues and minds among Zimbabweans as new authors will write in our own African and Pan-African idiom.
Bulawayo-based writer and publisher, Pathisa Nyathi, unquestionably one of Zimbabwe’s literary giants, believes budding writers will benefit a lot from the new Literature Bureau of which he said he was a product himself.
There was a lot of writing talent among Zimbabweans, he said, and that this needed to be developed into skills through training to benefit the nation.
Prof Zimunya had a lot of praise for Nyathi’s writing skills and his exhibition at ZIBF in Harare that Nyathi himself described as “low-key”, although he was delighted with the interest shown to his books.
Nyathi also mentioned that assistance from the Government through the Culture Fund had considerably helped writers over the years in developing their skills through book publishing.
However, there are limitations in the way that the fund can go in nurturing writing talent to bloom as it is a multi-media facility to which film industry and other players also look for assistance.
In the years before the inception of the Inclusive Government – a journey of believers and non–believers into Zimbabwe’s future – the ZIBF had grown into a major calendar event, drawing buyers and other indigenous people from other countries in Africa and overseas.
Many new titles made debut appearances, livening the shows, unlike now when publishers mainly concentrate on school textbooks which guarantee them a steady income, while books of fiction have become a sad rarity.
The latter is probably a contributing factor to a low reading culture in Zimbabwe today as fewer and fewer exciting works of fiction grace the stands at the ZIBF.
The Literature Bureau’s return will certainly have brought hope – if only a glimmer to some people in view of scarce financial resources – for a paradigm shift for the better in the book publishing sector in this country with Zimbabweans again winning international literary prizes as before, thereby placing the country’s name on the world map.
Online Reporter