19 August 2007

Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs,
MEC of Arts, Culture and Tourism in KwaZulu-Natal,
Your Honour, the Mayor of eThekwini Municipality,
Dr Alex Byrne, President of IFLA,
Dr Claudia Lux, President of IFLA,
Ms Ellen Tise, President of the National Organising Committee,
Mr Tommy Matthee, President of LIASA,
Mr John Tsebe, National Librarian,
Your Honourm Justice Albie Sachs,
Our International Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

On 26 June 1955, forty five years after the establishment of the Union of South Africa, and six after the inauguration of the apartheid regime, one of the most momentous events in the history of the struggle for South Africa’s liberation took place in the dusty township south-west of Johannesburg. Some 3 000 people of all races in South Africa, had gathered in the Congress of the People to draft a document which inspired the Liberation Struggle for the thirty-nine years it took for full democracy to be achieved. Discussing under the watchful eyes of a squadron of armed police and Security Branch officers who raided the gathering, at Kliptown that day a document containing the values that are now enshrined as basic human rights in our Constitution was adopted by acclaim. The preamble of the Freedom Charter adopted that day proclaims:

“We the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people”

In its eighth clause the Freedom Charter says:

“The doors of Learning and Culture Shall be Opened!”

and continues “All the cultural treasures of mankind shall be open to all, by free exchange of books, ideas and contact with other lands”

It is a testament to the ugly absurdities of apartheid that a year later, in December 1956, 157 people were arrested and charged with Treason. The basis of those Treason charges was the Freedom Charter. In the democratic order we now live in, the notion of “government by the consent of the governed” is considered axiomatic. In 1956 it was considered treason!

I am pleased to be able to stand here today and welcome you, the representatives of the libraries of the world, gathered in your 73RD World Library and Information Congress, to a country where we no longer censor ideas and where we, as enjoined by the Freedom Charter, actively encourage the free exchange of ides, whether in books or through the internet and other electronic and digital media.

South Africa needs to leapfrog its libraries from the book-based, segregated past into an open democratic inclusive and multi-media informational future and this conference comes at an apposite moment in this process.

Before our democratic transformation, our libraries were largely segregated on racial grounds; now they are open to all and are truly democratic spaces where knowledge can be gleaned and ideas exchanged. This is particularly important for our youth because we need to develop a universal reading culture.

In 1994 we began from the base of segregated public and community libraries, most of them situated where they served the informational and recreational needs of the largely white, predominately middle class book borrowing public.

Now our libraries are thronged with young learners seeking knowledge in books and a safe space to study. This radical shift in user patterns requires a radical response.

The Government has allocated an additional One Billion Rands over a three year period to transform the community library system in South Africa. The Department of Arts and Culture has undertaken a detailed needs analysis and allocated the first year’s funds to the nine provincial library services. Among our first priorities are:

• Improving access to libraries (better staffing and opening hours)
• Updated informational resources (especially educational support material)
• New library infrastructure
• Promotion of children’s literature
• The publication and dissemination of more books in indigenous languages

Regarding the last point, the National Library (which itself will be moving its Pretoria campus into a brand new building next year), is spearheading the republication of classic, but forgotten works in our nine indigenous African languages and has been charged with developing publishing in our indigenous languages.

It is widely recognised that the earlier a child begins to read, the more likely it is that the child will continue reading as an adult. It has also been determined by educationalists that a child whose first years of schooling take place in his or her mother tongue is best placed to perform well and to accommodate and internalise a switch to English later on, down the educational path.

Therefore, the emphasis on literacy and mother tongue reading is not an indulgence, but an imperative and our revitalised libraries are going to play a key role in achieving this objective.

A critical priority for the government is the promotion of social cohesion among the citizens of our country. The institution of the family was severely damaged by the migrant labour system of the past, and social networks are challenged by the overcrowding one finds in the informal settlements around many of our cities. We see an expanded community library network playing a vital role in nurturing cohesion because the libraries can provide a safe environment for social interaction, the exchange of information and ideas and development of skills.

At its most basic level a library in an informal settlement area is a building where children, especially girls, can gather safely to study in a warm and well lit area. Andrew Carnegie spoke fondly of his own experience as a poor man’s son, finding warmth and a safe environment in which to develop his mind in the library. In that sense,  the library can promote social cohesion at a very practical level.

The community library network will also play a critical supporting role in bridging the “digital divide” in our country. It is our intention to equip our community libraries, even in remote rural areas, with internet-connected computers so that the youth can access information on line in a safe environment with qualified library staff to guide them in the best use of the internet as an educational resource. In this regard I particularly wish to congratulate this province of KwaZulu-Natal on its bold initiative of introducing “cybercadets” into their community libraries. I look forward to seeing this innovative programme, which will undoubtedly capture the imagination of the youth, roll out across the province and later across the country.

For those librarians who may be afraid that the weight we give to connectivity and digital informational resources will banish books to back rooms, I offer you some hope from one of our other provinces, the Free State. This province was reporting on the implementation of the community library grants over the first quarter of the current financial year and sure enough, the young flocked to use the new computers in the libraries, but, then they went over to find more information in books. The user statistics showed complementary increases in both IT and book uses in these libraries.

A successful democracy depends on an engaged and thinking citizenry, which depends on the free flow of information. Colonial, authoritarian and racist regimes rely heavily on censorship, both political and moral. These actions sometimes descend to unbelievable levels of absurdity. For example, during the 1950s the apartheid censors banned the children’s classic story “Black Beauty”!
(Given the deep-rooted racist sentiments of the members of that body and the puritanical ethos they espoused, the title probably violated their every sensibility.) But, the more serious dimension of the censorship was that it suppressed open discussion, the exchange of ideas and encouraged ignorance and bigotry in addition to repressing the struggle to liberate our country. Literature, films, sound recordings, newspapers, journalists and editors were banned. And, when such measures did not extend far enough, the regime did not hesitate to employ violence, include murder. The 17th August, marked the 25th anniversary of the assassination of one of South Africa’s most gifted editors and investigative journalists, Dr Ruth First, who was killed with a parcel bomb sent in the guise of a book to her offices at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique. One year later, her former colleague Joe Gqabi, was gunned down in Harare, Zimbabwe by a hit squad in the employ of the apartheid regime. Democratic South Africa’s commitment to the values in the Freedom Charter derives from the understanding that untrammeled debate and public discourse is intrinsically valuable and that falsehood cannot possibly triumph in such an environment. That commitment is reinforced by the great sacrifices exacted from our people to realize a democratic political order.

The theme of this conference, “Libraries for the Future: Progress, Development and Partnership” is one with which we readily identify. Your conference also marks the tenth anniversary of LIASA, the Library and Information Association of South Africa, which the united and transformed the professional body of South African librarians and information specialists. We deeply appreciate the fact that IFLA, the international library representative organisation has come to South Africa to mark this event.

You are gathering in our leisure capital Durban, in the eThekwini Metropolitan Area, which has many famous libraries, and many not that are not so well known. I hope that you have the opportunity to visit them as well as enjoying the hospitality of this friendly city with its rich multi-cultural heritage. You may know that a five hour drive from here is the battlefield of Isandlwana where in 1879, the Zulu army inflicted one of the worst defeats ever suffered by Imperial Britain.
It was in this province too that Mahatma Gandhi began his struggle for truth, evolved and tested his philosophy of Satyagraha.  A few miles to the north-west he was ejected from a train on to the cold railway platform in Pietermaritzburg because he had the temerity to refuse to leave a “Whites only” first class carriage. It was on that cold platform in the night that he began his struggle that grew from a personal one to a mighty crusade that liberated the Indian sub-continent from the British Raj, sixty years ago this year. Permit me to congratulate all the delegates from that sub-continent on this important landmark in the history of India and in the struggle against colonialism.

This province of KwaZulu-Natal also has a rich colonial heritage. Here you will find the descendants of British soldiers, traders and settlers as well those of the Afrikaner Voortrekkers, of German, Norwegian and Swedish missionaries. South Africa has one of the largest Indian populations outside India which is centred on this city and in this province.  Many are the descendants of indentured labourers  brought to South Africa to work in the sugar cane estates. 

The largest university in this province also houses the largest Centre for the Study of African literature in this country, if not the continent. That collection compliments those of the pre-independence era, like the Killie-Campbell library. A sizeable collection, chronicling the liberation struggle from the 1940s till the mid-seventies is also housed at that same university, consisting of the papers of the late M.P. Naicker.

These collections are but a tiny fraction of informational resources available in this country. Their preservation for the use of future generations underscores the valuable work performed by librarians and others in the information services in sustaining our national heritage and that of humanity’s striving for a better world.

May your deliberations on “Libraries for the future: Progress, Development and Partnership” be inspired by your surroundings and by the heritage of this province and that of South Africa. I wish you every success in your conference and, please, enjoy your stay in South Africa, each and every one of you.

I thank you.

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