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18 February 2008

The Minister of Arts and Culture Dr Z Pallo Jordan has strongly criticised the publishing industry for failing to promote books in indigenous African languages. Jordan was speaking at a function to launch the re-issue of South African classics at the National Library in Pretoria last Monday.

The event was attended by more than 300 guests who included writers, publishers, artists and various people from the sector. "Virtually from my first day in office in June 2004, I entered into a rather fruitless dialogue with our South African book publishing sector.

"As one who is keenly aware of the huge disparities in our society and the gaping deficit we inherited from centuries of colonialism and decades of apartheid, I felt it was incumbent on me to spur our publishing industry to undertake publishing in indigenous African languages in earnest," he said.

Jordan charged the National Library to forge partnerships with old publishing houses like Lovedale, Tygerkloof and Morija in Lesotho to re-issue the classics in African languages re-issued. These include books like the widely acclaimed isiZulu novel, Inkinsela yaseMgungundlovu (voted among the best 100 books in Africa) by Sibusiso Nyembezi, Ke Eng? By ML Bopape (SePedi), Mulunguntima by TH Khosa (Xitsonga).

"I abandoned the hope of the commercial publishing sector coming to the party. But I long for the day when I can walk into exclusive books, or any other bookstore in this country, and find shelf upon shelf of books in the African languages.

"What we are doing is rediscovering something that has been mislaid for well nigh half a century. We are, in a sense, excavating a dimension of indigenous literature by raising awareness of works of quality that have been produced over more than one hundred and fifty years in the languages spoken in the majority of homes," he said.

Jordan insisted that the indigenous literature needed to be accessible and defended authors who wanted to express themselves in their mother-tongue.
"The orature and literature that has been produced by the story-tellers and the writers in indigenous languages are essentially no different from that in any other in these respects. What is specific to it is the environment in which the tales unfold.

"But they reveal and wrestle with the very same human frailties, foibles, idiosyncrasies and human robustness we found in other literatures. If no one else wishes to preserve these works, we as South Africans have a responsibility to our nation and humanity to ensure that they survive into the future," he said.

For further information, call:
Sandile Memela
Spokesperson for the Department of Arts and Culture
Cell: 082 800 3750

Premi Appalraju
Media Liaison Officer
Cell: 082 903 6778

Issued by: Department of Arts and Culture
18 February 2008