A 'Soccer World Cup approach' to tackling SA's literacy issues

To honour World Book Day, Yewande Omotoso caught up with SA's top librarian - and heard her ideas for a radical literacy revolution.

Ms Segametsi Molawa smiles readily. In the few minutes I've been in her presence, she has not seemed timid, or mean, or reclusive. And yet she is indeed a librarian.

She studied library science in the 1980s at the University of the North. She wanted to study medicine and was admitted to do so. But in her classes she found that the inequality wrought by apartheid education had left her, a bright high-school student, suddenly ill-equipped to compete. Unwilling to quit altogether, she transferred to her second choice.

Still, she wondered, was being a librarian a real job? Yes, as it turned out. Molawa is now the director of information services at the Human Sciences Research Council.

There is no lack of stereotypes about librarians: nerdy, dowdy, stern, obsessive-compulsive, socially inept. But the only qualifier we need to place ahead of the word "librarian", at least in the context of South Africa, is "scarce".

We needn't dwell on the obscenity of the actual numbers to assume that the annual intake of library science students is far smaller than those pursuing medicine or engineering. That the nation needs doctors and engineers is not in question. But if you sit and talk to Molawa, you'll soon accept an unchallengeable and much-ignored truth: that for a nation to have any kind of bright future, it needs many librarians and libraries.

The Department of Arts and Culture has apportioned R1.3-billion to public libraries. Thank you very much - that's by no means nothing. "But the gap is so big," says Molawa. A shocking 92% of South Africa's public schools lack libraries. This is in part due to the closure of masses of libraries in the late '90s in anticipation of the coming technology wave. The wave broke. Nothing miraculous happened; iPad or no iPad, we still need books.

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One  of many initiatives to fight for libraries is LongStorySHORT. I'm part of the project, which is the brainchild of Kgauhelo Dube of arts consultancy Kajeno Media.

Launched last month, LongStorySHORT is a series of events at which a celebrity storyteller will read a short story by an African writer to an audience. Most readings will be in public libraries and 24 stories have been chosen - one a month for the next two years. An eager team of fine writers will offer their talents to a travelling story exhibition. The stories will be performed by orators, and youngsters will gather in libraries to listen and later download the stories to listen to them over and over again.

So what, though? Which is not to be obnoxious, but rather to wonder: what would it really take to make the difference?

Molawa, given half a chance to "handle things", would declare a state of emergency.

Activist group Equal Education say the solution is achievable. A total of R10.25-billion would provide infrastructure, training, books and materials for all ordinary public schools. Another R2-billion would pay school librarians for their much-needed services.

In 2004, South Africa was awarded the Soccer World Cup. While no official state of emergency was declared, it was clear that South Africa had better come to the party. About R30-billion, plus some political might, plus a whole lot of pride and the flabbergasting power of football to make things happen, ensured that six years later, we were ready.

The idea of contrasting the building of libraries and the hosting of a sporting event is not mine. It's Molawa's - to illustrate the scale of our misguided priorities. After all the damage to literacy done by apartheid structures - which were focused on producing numbed minds - reading and libraries (unlike massive stadiums) are now considered nice-to-haves.

Molawa acknowledges that extreme poverty can prevent reading. But she also sees many a young person decorated in shoes, handbags and cellphones to the value of a modest beginner's library.

Really, the choice shouldn't be between being stylish and being well-read. That's where public libraries come in.

In her fantasy, Molawa declares a four-year programme of vigorous intervention, at the end of which we don't host a World Cup. Much better than that: we vanquish one of the largest invisible monsters on the planet, illiteracy.

Her plan would start with insisting on posts and funding for public-school librarians. Currently the task is often carried out by a subject teacher and considered an extramural duty.

Next: rolling out an array of literacy programmes, especially those targeting parents. Molawa is passionate about urging parents to read to their children from a young age. Reading is, after all, a habit, just like brushing one's teeth or making the bed.

Other vital steps would be to drive home the importance of writing in indigenous languages, and to standardise librarianship training in universities. During Molawa's tenure as president of the Library and Information Association of South Africa, it has gained "professional body" status and is empowered to confer accreditation.

And lastly, we need better data on reading. A quick Google search can tell me exactly how many libraries Australia has, who visits them and how often. Without that information, we have a surfeit of complaints about the lack of a reading culture, but little evidence about how it's growing.

My suggested addition to Molawa's plan would be this: we have a child grant and a social grant, why not a reading grant? Millions of them.

When Molawa was in primary school, the library closest to her home was reserved for white people. But her love of reading was cultivated by a zealous high-school teacher. Later, at university, having decided to forego medicine, she sat across from a man who would become her professor. A man who told her she had come to the right place. He told her he would empower her to change the world.

He was a librarian - and he promised he would teach her to become one too.

LongStorySHORT is a literature vitalising production that aims to celebrate African writers and their work by producing free podcasts of African stories for all to enjoy.

Yewande Omotoso's debut novel, 'Bom Boy', won the South African Literary Awards' First-time Published Author prize. She curated the series of 24 stories in LongStorySHORT's programme.