Mandla Langa is a South African poet, short-story writer and novelist. He is also the Executive Vice-President of PEN South Africa, an endorser of the Nal’ibali children’s literacy rights poster. Mandla spoke to us about the importance of literacy in allowing children to fulfill their potential:
The need to entrench the culture of reading among children was impressed on me recently. During the Easter weekend I accompanied our seven-year-old to the emergency section of one of Johannesburg’s hospitals as she was running a temperature. At the reception desk, an older couple was struggling with officialdom in their attempt to have their 13-year-old daughter registered on the system. Frustrated by a sheaf of forms, the girl’s parents seemed on the brink of giving up when their young charge decided to take control. Calmly, she answered the clerk’s questions and guided her father to sign the form, generally expediting the registration with as little embarrassment as possible for all involved.
This scenario reminded me of an isiZulu proverb, ukuzala ukuzelul’amathambo, literally meaning that giving birth is a way to extend one’s bones. It conveys the gratitude of the old and infirm on receiving succour from the young, usually an offspring or a relative. In a country awash with fiery hoops through which the unlettered citizens have to jump to gain access to services, it is usually young people, sons or daughters, who intervene and temper the harshness of such transactions with gatekeepers. They do this by simplifying the coded messages and Byzantine regulations that control people’s lives.
If these children are themselves unable to read and write, and we all too often find such examples – the most extreme being in shelters and on street corners, they are invariably condemned to an unspeakable future. They easily fall prey to drug addiction, violent crime and assorted depredations from grownups. We see them scavenging in our garbage, dwarfed by huge bales of recyclable material for sale. These instances, which no administration worth its salt should ever countenance, are no different from the hideous fate confronting children of war. The blame for all such situations, where the young are imperilled and their chances in life curtailed, can be placed squarely on the doorstep of the adults.
It is heartening to note, however, that many young people are not waiting passively for adults to take action on their behalf. Following a service delivery protest in Mohlakeng, outside Randfontein – and these protests invariably leave communities much worse than before – facilities, including a public library, were burnt to the ground. The youth of Mohlakeng started a movement to collect books and set up an underground library with an intention to introduce their age-mates to books and create a love for reading.
One hopes that this initiative and others like it lead to a movement to spread the love for reading and writing among young people – a new epidemic that will infect this country from coast to coast. One believes that once young people get a chance to read the stories of others, they will be inspired to write their own narratives, to reflect on the lives and loves of families and communities or even the tremors in their own private souls.
These journeys have to begin in the home, where parents need it impressed upon them that they have to instill in their children a love for reading and writing. From the home this journey must proceed to schools, from primary to secondary, and from high school to the university. This is where all of us have to debunk the myth of the supremacy of the sciences as a discipline above humanities. Much as we need doctors, physicists and engineers, we also need people who will help us dream.
It will be in this dreaming that children will learn that literature, reading and writing, are the foundations of life. They will learn to use their imaginations to enter into the ancient world, experience the heartbreak of tragic heroes and heroines, and exult in instances where lovers finally find each other after long days and nights in the wilderness. These stories, inscribed in pages and powered by the reader’s imagination, will enable young people to see the world through the eyes of others, even through the eyes of animals. These lessons in empathy are more valuable than sessions on a therapist’s couch – and more durable.
Our country, in dire need for some cohesion, has to spare no expense in ensuring that the children are empowered to unleash their imaginations as a foundation for a healthy and sane society. This World Book Day, April 23, join Nal’ibali, the national reading-for-enjoyment campaign, in celebrating the launch of a children’s literacy rights poster to raise awareness of what is needed to grow a book culture in South Africa, starting with our youngest citizens.