Sarah Duguid
Samuel Johnson said that the world was full of writers who didn’t care if they were studied they just wanted to be read.
But in South Africa dwindling numbers of school libraries and budget cuts for public libraries means that the nation’s access to books is becoming severely limited.
Public libraries cannot offer the service that people require and many face closure. Particularly affected are schoolchildren who, without school libraries, rely on public libraries for materials and a quiet place to study.
“Nobody cares about libraries or appreciates them as agents of change. We want a literate, reading nation and if we don’t have libraries, we won’t have that,” said a spokesperson for Friends of the Library, who didn’t want to be named.
In 1955, when public libraries came into being, they were joint undertakings between provincial governments and local authorities. In 1994 libraries were made the sole responsibility of provinces.
With their obligation removed, cash-strapped local authorities are withdrawing their financial support, says Friends of the Library. This leaves provincial governments with very small budgets to provide for libraries .
The group complains that there is no political will to find money, which means that the situation is likely to get worse.
In the Hout Bay library, for example, the standards set by the province suggest that it should have 12 librarians and should be open for 456 hours a month. In fact, it can afford only 3,5 permanent staff and is open 132 hours a month.
Two years ago the library in Sasolburg in the Free State received no new books for a year. According to a spokesperson for the library, the province told them that this was because the provincial budget had been spent on building the Pakisa racecourse in Welkom. The library now receives new books but, like libraries across South Africa, it complains that it does not receive nearly enough new materials.
The City of Johannesburg Library and Information Service has had to look beyond local government for money to provide its core service and recently received a $500000 (about R6-million) grant from the United States-based Carnegie Corporation.
Andrew Carnegie’s will stipulated that grants must benefit Americans but it has now allowed for up to 7,4% of its funds to be spent in countries that are or have been members of the British Commonwealth. The emphasis is currently on Commonwealth Africa and through its commitment to developing children’s services, the Johannesburg library managed to convince the Carnegie Corporation that its project would “do real and permanent good in the world”.
Johan Swiegelaar, head of library and archive services in the Western Cape government says: “[Library funding] is a real problem and solving it will be dependent on goodwill on all sides.”
He says that the provincial governments were given the sole responsibility for libraries but no extra budget and he agrees that if money is not found libraries will face closure.
While Swiegelaar is confident that the “goodwill” needed to reverse the problem is going to materialise, Helen Dunamy, the librarian at Sasolburg, is less convinced.
Dunamy says the problem lies with the education department.
“Public libraries are being used exhaustively by schoolchildren but they are not geared for schools,” she says.
School libraries are inadequate and the onus is on public libraries to support the curriculum. But they don’t have the right facilities or materials, she says.
She is sceptical about the Department of Education’s ability to deliver enough materials and doubts that anything will change in the near future.
Duncan Hindle, deputy director general of the education department, responded: “We don’t claim formal dependence on public libraries for school-based learning materials. We spend R1-billion annually on learning support materials and although they are not fully adequate, we consider it sufficient.”