In the space of a year, Cape Town has come to host Africa’s largest book fair south of the Sahara. Following the demise of the Zimbabwe International Book Fair, which for the last quarter century was the place to be for anyone interested in African books, many had hoped that the Cape Town event would fill that cultural void.
Despite unmistakable success in a range of areas — this year’s event will have double the exhibition space, for example, and the organisational efficiency is comparable to that of London, Bologna and Frankfurt — the challenge for the Cape Town Book Fair is to rise to the challenge of bringing in more local content and a greater participation by local black and African publishers, authors and booksellers.
For despite last year’s impressive display, the profile of books and publishers at the fair included little in the way of indigenous African content and participation. Indeed, book fairs in London and Frankfurt have managed to attract more exhibitors from Africa and the developing world than their Cape Town counterpart.
In case this is dismissed as just another case of South Africa’s obsession with equity and transformation, I need to point out that book fairs in other regions — Latin America, for example — have played a critical role in growing the local and regional reading and book sector. Given the range of sub-Saharan Africa’s social and economic challenges, would this not be a good thing?
It is a given that the growth area for the local book sector is the majority of black people who are not yet “booked” and the exploitation of cultural and linguistic ties in the region is through intra-African book trade. It is also a business issue for the northern publishers and booksellers, many of whom had hoped that the Cape Town Book Fair would become a centre where they could meet a range of publishers from around the continent.
Why was there such a poor showing of African publishers, booksellers and, above all, Cape Town’s black community at the inaugural fair?
A major contributing factor was the exclusive and Eurocentric profile of the local book sector. Secondly, it is a reflection of the state of the book sector outside the state-sponsored textbook sector on the continent. Beyond South Africa and Egypt, there is very little viable general book publishing happening in Africa. The few African publishers who would benefit from attending events such as these cannot afford to attend international book fairs.
The objective of book fairs should not only be to reflect the profile and state of the local book sector; they should also contribute to its growth and transformation. This should be more the case with Cape Town, given the monotonous profile of the industry and South Africa’s years of isolation from the rest of the continent.
The Cape Town Book Fair should not be satisfied with the impressive numbers of exhibitors and visitors. There should be more concern with the dismal presence of African publishers, the lack of African content and the relatively small number of Africans coming to the fair. Above all, the organisers should be thinking about ways to bring new readers to the fair, and how to attract publishers, booksellers and authors from the rest of the continent and the diaspora. This will make it the definitive African book fair that it can so easily be.
It will also make an immense and much-needed contribution to the transformation and growth of the African book sector. If the business and the cultural appeal of the book fair are not established in its founding years, the excitement of a nice holiday destination will quickly fizzle out, and we’ll be left with a poorer cousin of the Frankfurt Book Fair on the banks of the Liesbeek.
The Cape Town Book Fair should be able to offer something unique to everyone: an indigenous African book experience through the content, the publishers, the booksellers and the participating public.
The book fair could partner with NGOs and government to provide fleets of buses to help communities that would otherwise not be able to afford to attend the book fair on public days. The department of arts and culture and the Centre for the Book have many projects aimed at stimulating publishing in African languages and introducing new writers. Such programmes could supply the book fair with the much-needed diverse outlook.
Since the advent of democracy, there has been very little transformation in the South African publishing industry. It will be imperative for the book fair to support transformation through local subsidy schemes for small black publishers. Similarly, subsidies could support collective and inexpensive stands for African authors, booksellers and publishers. Annual themes could focus on specific countries and regions of the continent to give the fair a distinctive African flair.
The Cape Town Book Fair can easily become the world’s definitive African book fair. To achieve this, it needs to stimulate the potential diversity of the local sector and attract content, publishers and booksellers from the rest of the continent. This way, it will be able to make a much-needed contribution to the development and transformation of the book sector in South Africa and the continent, and help the African book claim its place in the literary world.
Brian Wafawarowa is MD of New Africa Books. The views in this article are his own