adminHatred Zenenga
During a recent leadership seminar in Harare, former Delta Corporation chief executive officer and now business consultant Mr Joe Mutizwa asked us a discomforting question: “How many of you read or bought a book in the last two days?” There was some silence in the room. A colleague sitting next to me raised his hand he had read one, titled “Water Spirits”. There was laughter, and it was not obvious why people laughed. It was not clear whether they were laughing at the title or doubted that one of them had indeed read a book in the past two days.
At the occasion, Mr Mutizwa implored Zimbabweans to embrace a reading culture because it is the only way to attain excellence in all human callings. For me, this was a genuine desire to revive the reading culture among us.
And nothing can be further from the truth.
It is clear that there is now no reading culture among Zimbabweans across the board.
But more worrying is the category of school children.
Why so much school children? These are the leaders of tomorrow and the hope for our future. They always say capture them young. Those in the teaching profession will tells us that any teaching imparted to the young will have some lasting effect.
According to Francis Bacon, reading “maketh a man” (woman). It no doubt makes the difference between educated and non-educated people. Books contain lots and lots of information and knowledge that anyone neglecting them does so at their own peril. The same applies to any nation that does so as well. All treasures in the world and secrets of success are locked in books. Citizens that read books are better informed, enlightened and well-equipped to grapple with existential problems than those that do not read.
There is a familiar racist joke which says: “if you want to hide anything from a black man, put it in a book.” Apart from its racist overtones, there is some grain of truth in the saying. In fact, there are more people who shop for clothes, perfumes and other mundane things, leaving out books.
Many people hate books and matters of the intellect. In fact, Zimbabweans have lost their reading culture. Where many of them read, they read solely for examination purposes. Others read junk material.
Generally, people read with a less interpretative mind. They no longer read for pleasure.
That is precisely why the failure rate in Ordinary Level and other examinations is very high. That is why many wishing to study in Europe and Australia are now being asked to take an English examination administered by the British Council. A good many are failing that exam.
We now have many people, who boast their fat purses rather than their brains. Hence, everything in Zimbabwe has become monetised. People are driven by materialism.
I miss past generations in the 1970s and 1980s, whom I grew up seeing burying themselves in book collections from the popular Pace Setters Series (those were my favourite), James Hardley Chase, Mills and Boons, to African Writers Series by Heinemann, Macmillan and Longmans. The list is by no means exhaustive.
Others may, however, argue that I am trapped in the past. People have moved with the times and are now engrossed in the digital media — the Internet. In other words, people read newspapers, magazines, journals, books and others publications of interest from ipads, laptops and smart phones. Pupils and students no longer need the library. They simply research through the search engine Google (popularly referred to as googling) any subject and the answers are readily available.
But can we, therefore, completely do away with books? We need concerted Government and private sector effort to equip all Zimbabwean schools — from primary to university — with good quality books. Similarly, all public libraries in the country, which have become obsolete, should be re-equipped with first-rate reading books.
Corporates should chip in, too. We have seen them in sports and music promotions they sponsor.
This is also the time our university lecturers should be encouraged to continue writing books. Our universities should not only depend on foreign books that do not take care of our peculiarities. Our university academics should rise up to the challenge and publish quality books for the different levels of our education system. We cannot be seen relying immensely on books written by the famed Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Cyprian Ekwensi, and others. Zimbabweans cannot continue to depend on foreign authors for recommended texts in universities. Some of the foreign books hardly address our problems.
There are many academics getting promoted with journal articles, something that retards book development. Books command wider readership than most journal articles that have a restricted circulation and audience. Above all, most journal articles are highly academic and not useful in solving critical human problems as books do.
We can rekindle the reading culture in Zimbabwe.
Online Reporter