I have come into the possession of a most intriguing document. It is a questionnaire currently being sent out to authors by South African publishing houses; clearly a first attempt to put plagiarism on a professional footing. Plagiarism, of one form or another, is the newest trend in South African post-transformation creative writing, and is fast gaining popularity. In response, standard publishing contracts, entered into between authors and publishers, are under review with the intention that they be redrafted so as to anticipate any problems arising for publishers when their staff fail to recognise and excise literary loot from manuscripts.
The idea behind the redrafting of publishing contracts springs from sterling pioneer work in vindicating plagiarism, undertaken by two leading South African publishers: Random House and the Struik subsidiary, Zebra Publishers, headed respectively by Mr Stephen Johnson and Ms Marlene Fryer. These two publishing houses are plagiarism industry leaders in that they have each twice brought out books subsequently revealed to contain unacknowledged material their authors had passed off as being of their own fabrication.
Faced with insubordinate questioning by the vermin media, both Johnson and Fryer showed extra-ordinary fortitude. Even though altogether four of their authors had been caught with their fingers deep in plagiarism’s cookie jar, these two redoubtable book people dug in their heels, not only refusing to remove the questionable books from sale, but boisterously proclaiming the professional integrity of the exposed literary thieves.
As a direct result of the Johnson-Fryer fortitude, it has now been agreed that all future South African contracts will embody so-called ‘plagiarism conditionality clauses” to help publishers take shelter from the typical media storms which accompany revelations about the flagrant theft of literary and intellectual material.
Standard publishing contracts usually specify the obvious and include businesslike agreements as to royalties, dates and a whole bangshoot of secondary clauses and guarantees — mostly in favour of the publishers. Below are some extracts from the questionnaire, answers to which will help towards the drafting of a new and improved standard publishing contract.
Question 1) As an author do you believe that the duplication under your name of someone else’s ideas and research is justifiable, in that such ideas and research deserve as wide an exposure as possible? YES/NO/SOMETIMES. (Please tick only one answer.)
Question 8) When inserting the work of other authors into your own, is it advisable to try to camouflage this by tinkering with the original material — as Mr William Mervin Gumede seems to have done in his perceptive book on Thabo Mbeki’s power-mongering? DEFINITELY/OCCASIONALLY.
Question 12) When some rat-faced journalist writes an article accusing you of conspicuous plagiarism, which of the following responses would you like to see from your publisher? A) A statement attesting to your fervent personal and professional integrity. B) An undertaking that your work will immediately be removed from sale. C) A threat of a defamation action against the rat-faced journalist and his newspaper. D) A statement blaming the lack of attribution of sources to either computer errors or forgetfulness by some anonymous editor. A/B/C/D
Question 13) You are approached to explain how three or four lines by a dead English Poet Laureate happen to be repeated word-for-word in your own work — as they were recently in a book by St Antjie Krog. How do you explain this? A) By saying that you have never read any of the work of the dead English Poet Laureate and that the duplication of his lines came about by your head being caught in some errant cosmic rays at a TRC hearing. B) By adopting the Darrel Bristow-Bovey methodology and admitting that you vaguely remember one of your friends speaking about having read some obscure essay by the said dead English Poet Laureate and that your photographic memory is to blame. C) By saying that, since the dead English Poet Laureate is, in fact, dead, you have every right to pass off his work as your own. A/B/C
Question 17) You are the author of a grossly sentimentalised, white liberal, post-apartheid conscience-jerker. It is discovered that in this book you have included, as your own, no less than 400 words, taken verbatim from the work of a Wits University academic. What would be your glutinous reaction to such an accusation? A) That in stealing only 400 words you were within the Moral Plagiarism Limits set by the Stellenbosch academic Michiel Heyns who, at the time, referred to Pamela Jooste’s lifting of 400 words (virtually verbatim) from a newspaper article as not being plagiarism in a ‘meaningful sense”. Nor, added Heyns, was Jooste’s ‘appropriation of somebody else’s words on a significantly deceitful scale”. B) Announce that you have decided to follow Heyns’s lead, and describe complaints about your filching, without so much as a word of accreditation, as a ‘moral hissy fit”. C) Welcome the raising of a stiff finger to all and sundry, in the manner of publisher Mr Stephen Johnson when he said that he would not withdraw your work from sale and would look forward to your next work. A/B/C.
Hail to Stephen Johnson and Marlene Fryer for setting the standard of how to defend the indefensible.