Hidden in the bowels of Park Station, Johannesburg, in a burnt-out underground chamber, lies a secret alcove of books.
Hardly anyone knows it's there, and I don't recommend trying to visit. The entrance ramp is obscured by a rack of leather coats and a bin of second-hand shoes. Often the path is blocked by young men sifting through packets of onions, tossing the rotten ones onto a heap and slicing the decent ones for stews. The smell, especially in summer, is putrid.
But this alcove is an unacknowledged pillar of Johannesburg's literary life. More than that, actually. It's a Lazarus Chamber for books that have lived a full life and been donated to charity shops and church sales, where they've been rescued by a soft-spoken man named Present Zorwa.He crisscrosses Gauteng by taxi and Metrorail looking for good books he can buy, usually for R10 or less. He stores them in the alcove and sends them out again to booksellers across the city, who then get them into the hands of new readers.
He's also a bit of a pusher. If a friend or relative loses a job or just needs a new one, he teaches them how to sell books. People like Blessing Tsakatsa, who used to install solar panels until he was retrenched last year. Now he says he makes more money selling African classics, motivational and business books in a market next to Ernest Oppenheimer Park.
"It can seem like people just buy something to read, but all of these motivational books, business books, some of these people, they want to start their own businesses," he said. "I'm helping people, that's what I like about it. Some people, they come back and say, 'Blessing, thank you very much. I came back with my friend. That book, I got it from you. Eh, it was a powerful book. It helped motivate me.'"
He's still figuring out the vagaries of the market. At his old stand on Plein Street, he sold a lot of Wilbur Smith, for example. On Joubert Street, people want John Grisham.Many of Tsakatsa's books came from Zorwa's alcove, which he shares with a curry vendor who often tosses her pots and utensils on top of his cardboard boxes of books, regardless of the treasures that might be inside.
That's a small price to avoid venturing all the way underground, beneath De Villiers Street and fully under Park Station, into a cavern of charred walls and terrifying candlelit spaces. Other men demarcate storage areas there, collect rents and keep watch by candlelight, which leads inevitably to fires.
It's unclear to me if this underground area was originally meant for parking - the entrance seems too narrow for cars - or for storage and deliveries. On my first visit more than a year ago, Zorwa's boxes held textbooks, mostly for high school or Unisa, and a few cookbooks, mostly baking, which he says is especially popular. A good dose of motivational reading and business, and a variety of novels, from Danielle Steele to African titans like Bessie Head.
On that visit, he wanted to show me something he'd found in a dustbin in a second-hand shop in Benoni, which he'd bought for R5: an edition of Winnie the Pooh, beautifully bound, in a leather cover, with gold-embossed lettering.At various times the alcove has sheltered signed editions of Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming.
More commonly, his eye for antiquarian texts leads him to Rhodesiana like books about the Selous Scouts or equivalent titles for white South Africa's military past. In the alcove, he protects them not only from his neighbour's undried cookware, but also from rainwater runoff and the fearless rats that rule Johannesburg from even deeper below ground.That's why he came to see me in early June, to ask about storage at my shop, Bridge Books. Whoever runs the parking garage has decided that Zorwa needs to move by month end, so he needs a new space.
My storage area is inside a bank vault, under my bookstore in the old Barclays headquarters at 85 Commissioner Street. It's not as Gringotts as it sounds. The vault is neatly tiled and lit by functional fluorescent bulbs. While the vault lacks style, it is a clean, well-lit space that is accessible during normal trading hours.One sells political memoirs to supplement his winter-coat and herbal-supplement business, while another keeps a stand of second-hand novels next to the bread in a superette. The fourth is a large Nigerian import shop, selling Bibles, mass-market paperbacks and Nigerian spiritual books whose titles resemble plots in Nollywood movies: War Against Satanic Caterers & Evil Restaurants, NEW! Acid and Machine Gun Prayers, The Spiritual Barbers & Barbing Salons.Another opens in July, in a skateboard shop in a new shopping arcade between Commissioner and Albertina Sisulu. In addition to skateboards, they've got a second-hand collection that includes Agatha Christie and Jane Austen.
There are a few other suppliers. Some deal in books pirated in Lagos, distinguished by their flimsy spines and odd paper texture. Others sell books stolen from bookstores and libraries. Most do a swap-and-sell trade, totally dependent on what random people decide to sell from their own collections each month.But he's been selling books for eight years, and has noticed that fiction doesn't sell as well as it used to. He thinks that's because readers are now looking for solutions.
"Because somebody can say, 'Do you have a book that is talking about finances, that is talking about marriage, or maybe about property?' They just need something that can solve their problems," he said.
"There are so many books that have been written about the past, and the history," he said. "Most of the young people, they don't want political books. They want something to build them up. Because it's about where we are going, not where we are coming from."
Shea runs Bridge Books, which in addition to retail, connects urban booksellers to local publishers. Booksellers looking for Steve Biko, Frantz Fanon or Sindiwe Magona can order their books at wholesale prices. In a good month the bookstore sells a couple of hundred books that way. In return, Bridge Books buys from the street, to supplement the store's second-hand collections..