The Sunday Mail
Andrew Moyo and Takudzwa Chihambakwe
It matters not that Zimbabwe has one of Africa’s most admirable literacy rates; the country’s book industry is dying.
Publishers have over the years survived on selling textbooks, but amidst economic hardships schools and pupils are encouraging sharing of very few texts. Photocopying machines are running around the clock as illegal duplicates multiply.
Zimbabwe International Book Fair chairperson Blazio Tafirei, speaking at this year’s edition of the fair — which ran from July 31 to August 5 in Harare —said local book publishing faced extinction.
“From 15 publishers last year, we only have seven exhibiting this year. This includes both the small and the big publishers. Most local publishing houses closed shop in the past few years.
“Point in case is Longman. Today we only have their agent, CPS, operational in the country. The majority of the remaining publishing houses such as College Press, Prestige and Zimbabwe Publishing House have drastically downsized their operations,” said Tafirei.
It gets worse. Many publishing houses have liquidated assets to stay operational.
“It has been a horrific five years for players in the sector as they can no longer keep liquidating their assets because they have now reached a point where they basically have nothing left to liquidate.
“If there is nothing done by Government to help boost the sector, I am sure in the next 18 months we would have no local publishers left,” warned Tafirei.
Publishers were hopeful that the introduction of a new curriculum by Government would result in great demand for new books, but that has not been the case.
Said Tafirei: “There is no hope with the current situation. It is actually a cost to the publishers because they have to invest in a whole new product and that means they have to spend more and they are spending money they do not have.
“Right now, from the beginning of the year we have a new curriculum but no books were bought to send to schools so publishers sent samples, which means we have a teacher who is holding one copy and trying to teach over 20 pupils. We are creating the scourge of photocopying and piracy because we are not buying the correct material to give them.”
Tafirei said there had been a decline in publication of fiction, too.
“At the moment creative minds are idle, and we are burying a lot of them with their ideas and knowledge. We cannot reverse that. There are some who have guts and they keep on publishing but I am not aware of a publisher who has been making a profit for the past four years. Most of the lucky ones just break even.”
Publishers have had to make serious cuts on print runs.
“For a book like ‘Nhaka Yehupenyu’, we used to print 50 000 copies per grade but for this year, we have printed 4 000 and we still have them in stock. When it comes to novels, we never printed under 2 000 because schools would buy novels for their libraries but now we don’t even print above 500 and these copies can last for four years.”
The pirates are also circling, doing their best to kill legitimate publishing.
“ … have you ever imagined the type of creature we are creating by allowing someone to steal with impunity?” asked the ZIBF chair.
“The person who is photocopying books is the same person who is going to photocopy and create fake money, forge birth certificates, passports, everything. We are going to have a forged economy one day because we are teaching these people that stealing pays.
“We should have our own institutions, our own authors and our own printers. Let’s have our own system running and allow it to grow because publishers will not survive if they don’t sell books to schools.
“If you look at Zambia, most of the major publishers have closed, which is why you see several international publishers coming in to fill the void and we will suffer the same fate if nothing is done to support the industry.”
On the argument put forward by others that the reading culture was on the decline, Tafirei said even if children wanted to read, they were not being provided with books.
“The demand for textbooks is minimal because the end users, the schools and parents, are unable to buy generally because of the economic situation. We are saying, the nation is not making available the reading material.
“We are having short cuts because the material, the tools available to the headmaster and the teacher are limited in terms of quantity. You will find 20 pupils in a school trying to read one book and in most cases a photocopy, so that area has been neglected seriously.”
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Tafirei said the concept of “Command” could be used in the education sector.
“If we can command agriculture and allow people to eat, because we cannot postpone eating, why can’t we do the same with education? We have to take the decisive steps to correct the situation because it’s possible that some leaders are not aware or they don’t know the scale of the problem that we have in that area.
“This is a critical area and the situation has now reached critical proportions. We have completely decimated what we had in the education sector by simply not providing the appropriate learning material,” said Tafirei.
However, Minister of Primary and Secondary Education Lazarus Dokora disputed the claims that schools were not buying books for the new curriculum.
“If you talk to one publisher whose books are not being bought and he tells you that schools have not been buying books, you don’t run with that gospel but rather go into the schools and find out for yourself if they don’t have these books,” said Dokora, adding: “I don’t believe that books are not being bought, go into the schools and ask them to show you the books they have in stock if you want to get a clearer picture.”
He said there were several revenue streams that were in place to ensure schools had appropriate materials.
“Besides Government support, schools have the levy system and the money raised through this channel is supposed to be used for things such as buying reading materials for pupils.”
He added that tackling piracy was supposed to be a collective effort with the involvement of law enforcement personnel, publishers, the public and other stakeholders.
E-books can reduce costs, but that requires investment in ICTs and electrification.
Veteran author Stephen Chifunyise challenged publishers to take advantage of technological changes.
“There is a lot of demand for African produced content on the e-learning space because most of the content available to our children is not produced from within Africa.
‘‘Therefore, there is need for players in the sector to step in and make use of this gap and this could be a good revenue stream for them,” said Chifunyise.
He pointed out that his own books were in high demand in Europe.
“I have a couple of my books on e-book mainly for my American and English audiences the sales have been good and they are actually demanding content in Shona and Ndebele in those markets. So I am encouraging the local players in the sector to also consider investing in e-books.”
Chifunyise said mobile books were an easy way to get children to read.
“Recent studies show that the mobile book is now regarded as one of the most effective ways to get children reading, so there is another reason why we need to have a group of players within the book industry to start writing for this medium.
“Also, a recent study by Unesco revealed that women read six times more than men when content is on the mobile book as opposed to the traditional print format,” Chifunyise said.
Tafirei remains optimistic.
“The fight by the players in the sector to stay afloat would be buttressed by the quality of the persons that came through to the fair this year. We had various key stakeholders such as teachers, school heads and provincial education directors coming through and engaging with the players in the sector.
“I must say some lucrative discussions have been made and we are hoping that these will yield something positive for the publishers. I must also commend the different exhibitors for presenting some quality products. The books were well packaged and the content is very good across the board.”
