The Sunday Mail
| THE Zimbabwe International Book Fair, which ran from Monday to Saturday last week, brought to life the local literary scene. |
The event has always been a great platform for the literary community to connect and share ideas on mapping the way forward for the development of the industry.
This year, the book fair was themed “Igniting Interest in Reading for Sustainable Development”, which is befitting considering how people increasingly prefer playing their gadgets over reading books.
I attended the ZIBF Indaba Conference on Monday and Tuesday, where stakeholders from across the country deliberated issues besetting the book industry.
Topics like the reading culture, skills for producing reading materials, access to reading materials, reading and technology and intellectual property rights were presented and discussed at length.
But it was the session that dealt with publishing and sustainable development that caught my attention.
Presented by two academics from the National University of Science and Technology’s Department of Publishing Studies, Sandra Mpofu and Effort Chido Chingono, the segment provided much food for thought.
Chingono diligently assessed the role of publishers in ensuring sustainability of the book value chain.
Her compatriot, Mpofu, made an intriguing presentation on “publishing of children’s books in local languages in Bulawayo”, highlighting the lack of such material in book shops in Zimbabwe’s second-largest city.
While the paper was based on findings in the city of Bulawayo, the situation might as well be the same throughout the country.
The lack of reading material at grassroots in local languages is a major reason why there is decreasing appreciation for the written word.
According to Mpofu’s research, the children’s books that are in bookstores include the Sunrise series and Early Childhood Development Time series, among a host of other literature in English.
There was nothing in local languages.
Zimbabwe in 2013 agreed to 16 official languages — but English remains the tongue of choice for publishers. Publishers, in turn, say the market for books in local languages is not profitable.
Government has cultural policies that promote the use of local languages at grassroots; however, most of the books on sale remain in English.
Certainly, promoting 16 national languages will be difficult if literature largely remains in English.
Mpofu made use of numerous scholarly references reinforcing the importance of local language use in children’s learning.
“Ball (2011) confirmed that children learnt best in their mother tongue and to retain their mother tongue, children must have continuous formal instruction in their first language to develop reading and writing skills.
“Edwards (2009) stated that the use of local languages allowed children to harness their knowledge of life and language in order to draw meaning from, rather than simply decoding the text,” she highlighted.
She added that for teachers in Zimbabwe to educate children using their mother tongue, they needed teaching and learning materials in those languages.
Other problems affecting publishing, highlighted during the presentation, were a poor book buying culture, authors unwilling to write in languages other than English, and high production and distribution costs.
Mpofu said though publishers needed Government support to develop materials in local languages, parents also had a role to play by buying the books and encouraging their children to read.
“The children’s book sector in local languages may present a lucrative market but there is need to create conditions that favour their development.
“Publishers were not producing a lot of books in local languages because there is no market, therefore, if parents’ attitude towards book buying change, publishers will also find themselves in a better position to publish the books.”
