The National Library of South Africa
by Kenneth Walker
In South Africa, the National Library is emblematic of the extraordinary changes taking place in the nation.
Many of the library professionals who are involved with the National Library of South Africa belie the stereotype of librarians as bland and unexcitable. Most exhibit an enthusiasm and passion that is rarely associated with those who are often considered to be staid and steady bookworms. Take Melanie Geustyn, for example, who was recently appointed head of Special Collections at the National Library. "I'm very lucky to work here," she says. "I'm always surprised to discover the things I didn't know we had." Then there's 62-year-old Hafez Haffajee, the librarian at the University of Natal who was also involved in the commissions that established the new National Library. "If I had to live my life over again," he says, "I'd still be a librarian. It's been fun. I come to work every day with no idea what to expect. I might have plans and meetings and then the phone will ring, and it's someone who needs something, so off I go. Being able to make that kind of contribution has meant a really fulfilling and good life. And now, with the National Library, we are at the beginning of something truly wonderful that includes rediscovering a large part of our history."
The development of a unified National Library of South Africa is representative of one of those transformative beginnings that so many point to as indicative of the changes taking place in South Africa since the advent of democracy in 1994 after 50 years of legally entrenched segregation under the apartheid system, which was itself preceded by 400 years of colonialism. Carnegie Corporation of New York has been involved in supporting the National Library because, says Rookaya Bawa, program officer in the Corporation's International Development Program, "In most countries in Africa, the National Library is the backbone of the public library service. Not only does it hold the cultural heritage of a nation but it also provides a gateway for that nation to intersect with the rest of the world. And in the best of all possible worlds, it is a gate that swings both ways--providing outward-bound global access to those who live in a particular country while inviting the rest of the world in, as well."
The National Library of South Africa: Two Become One
Until just before the end of the 20th century there were, in effect, two national libraries in South Africa. One, the South African Library, founded in Cape Town in 1818, is among the oldest libraries on the continent. The other was the State Library, founded in 1887 in Pretoria, South Africa's capital.
The two institutions were amalgamated in November 1999 when they ceased to exist as separate entities and become, instead, the Cape Town and Pretoria campuses of the National Library of South Africa. The Pretoria campus is undergoing a transformation of its own in the form of a new building that will soon be erected, providing much new and badly needed space in the form of thousands of square feet for books, reading rooms and other facilities, along with approximately 1,800 seats for library users, a great improvement over the library's current capacity of 130. It's so small, and demand for its resources is so great, that people often line up in the street outside, waiting to get in.
With its expansion plans in place, the National Library is also determined to collect and rediscover aspects of African literature as well as artifacts and other materials that were often marginalized under the colonial and apartheid governments, including works in indigenous languages. In cooperation with other African countries, South African librarians seem determined to assemble, in the words of one official, "an African collection the likes of which the world has never seen."
South Africans are also working closely with other African governments in attempting to redefine libraries for a continent with rich oral traditions but often lacking the kind of in-depth, detailed and inclusive written histories that are the bedrock of library collections elsewhere. This redefinition would give libraries a central role in meeting the educational, health and developmental needs of African peoples.
One element of this vision involves the implementation of cutting-edge technology that, in addition to facilitating two-way global interactivity, will also help to bring library services to poor and rural areas that have been denied them in the past. This is critical, says Bawa, because "All communities in Africa deserve the best library services we can provide. In that way, we can help to nurture an interest in reading and learning."
The Vision is the Mission
John Tsebe is the man largely responsible for turning the vision of a new national library, with both national and global outreach, into reality. Tsebe, who has Masters' degrees in library science from Syracuse University and in public administration from Harvard University, was appointed the first black South African National Librarian in March 2004.
Observed on almost any typical day, Tsebe moves like a man on a mission. He spends very little time in his office, racing throughout South Africa to boost local librarians and attend professional conferences. In his own country, Tsebe speaks before government committees in support of libraries and library funding but also travels outside of South Africa--including beyond the borders of the African continent--to forge partnerships with other libraries and staff. Some are critical of the travel calendar he keeps, but Tsebe argues that building relationships not only among library professionals but also among and between professional organizations in related fields is integral to the outreach ideals of the National Library. Says Tsebe, "The National Library must lead the way in revitalizing libraries in South Africa because libraries are essential to the nation's socioeconomic development. Our view is that the more people read, the more they become enlightened, the more employable they are and the more jobs they can create."
Tsebe acknowledges the difficulty of aiming so high in terms of what libraries can achieve, but he says, "If we succeed in South Africa, we can pave the way to encourage other African countries to follow the same path. What we want is to move towards being the most advanced library on the continent."
Tsebe has spent much energy in his first year at the helm trying to provide leadership to a public library system in South Africa that has experienced the tug and pull of a nation that, more than a decade after the transition from apartheid to democracy, is transforming its culture, politics and institutions while at the same time trying to apportion its resources in the context of needs that include improvement and equitable access to vital services such as education, health care, and even water and sewage. Given those priorities, libraries don't always come out on top. In fact, says National Library board chairperson Professor Rocky Ralebipi-Simela, "Today, only a fraction of the population even has access to libraries," adding that many of the new black officials in South Africa's provinces, which are responsible for their local libraries, are skeptical of the need. "When I go to provincial ministers and lobby for libraries," she says, "they tell me, 'You are the only person asking for libraries. Everybody else wants more schools or sports facilities.'"
Even so, the Corporation's Rookaya Bawa, drawing on her previous experience as head of the Provincial Library Service in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, thinks officials can be persuaded to support libraries. "The more that library facilities are seen as essential to education," she says, "the easier it is to raise money for them."
Dr. Graham Dominy, the National Archivist of South Africa, agrees, saying that he already detects a shift in attitudes about the need for libraries, primarily because of the demand from students. "Generally speaking," he says, "any library you go into in South Africa is packed with people. There is a palpable thirst for information, for knowledge." Bawa cites another reason that libraries and their resources are increasingly in demand. Youngsters flock to them, she says, "because, in many cases, students have nowhere else to study. Libraries have quiet space and lights, things they may not always have at home. Libraries, also, will often be the first place students see television and computers and be able to access the Internet. The library is indispensable to learning and development."
Positive Signs
One goal of the National Library of South Africa is--by serving as a model and by creating interest in and excitement about a library's ability to forge connections between people and nations, as well as to spur learning--to help build a constituency for libraries that, while rooted in popular support, also reaches into the policy realm. But to develop a library system that matches the needs of South Africa, says Graham Dominy, will cost many millions of dollars: expansion, improving technology, increasing access and adding resources are all expensive propositions. The government may not be inclined to contemplate that kind of investment right now but eventually, Dominy believes, the money will have to be found. "Many white South Africans can afford to get reading and entertainment material from private-sector sources," he says, "but that is not the case in black communities where libraries are necessary to fill the great educational gaps that exist."
Building a constituency for libraries has taken much of the time and energy of library officials like Tsebe and Ralebipi-Simela, and the task is mostly an uphill climb in a country where, out of a population of more than forty million, twelve million are functionally illiterate adults, half of whom can read or write almost nothing at all. Surveys also show staggering illiteracy among young school-age children. And the only book in most rural households is the occasional bible.
Still, there are hopeful signs of progress. For example, a project is underway that aims to involve each of South Africa's approximately 1,200 public libraries in the creation of "reading spaces" in places like churches, after-hours classrooms or even private home. The reading spaces would lend books like regular libraries and also offer supervised places for children to study. A local community member would be trained to run each reading space, which would receive books from the main library.
One place where the development of reading spaces has already been embedded into municipal planning is the township of Mdantsane in South Africa's Eastern Cape province. The second largest black township in the country, Mdantsane is currently served by only one library, but the construction of a second is expected to begin in 2006, with ten satellite reading spaces to be created as part of the plan. A similar project was undertaken in the Northern Cape province, with Corporation support. Sunitha Vallabh, the provincial library director, says that the reading spaces became so popular that there was great demand to turn them into full-fledged, formal libraries.
Making sure that the torch gets passed to the next generation of skilled librarians is another way that Tsebe is attempting to build a culture of excellent libraries and librarianship in South Africa. As head of the National Library, Tsebe has committed his institution to helping train not only the next cohort of librarians but also conservators and information technology specialists. One strategy for achieving that goal has involved engaging the help of South Africa's professional library associations such as the Library Information Association of South Africa (LIASA).
Ujala Sathgool is the director of a Corporation-funded professional training project based at LIASA. Sathgool explains that the project will be officially launched in the fall of 2005 at the LIASA annual convention. There, LIASA members will receive training that ranges from improving interpersonal skills to the development of highly advanced communications information technology. In terms of professional training, overall, says Sathgool, "The challenge is to get people to think critically about training needs. In South Africa, that's particularly difficult because, to a great extent, libraries were conceived as providing a recreational outlet. But the demand from students for our educational services and from schools that lack the resources has grown enormously. So we have to redefine libraries as no longer being primarily recreational facilities."
On another front, in order to help create a culture of reading, writing and publishing--especially in indigenous languages--the National Library has helped to fund the Centre for the Book in Cape Town, which began operation in 1998. The Centre encourages writing in South Africa's eleven official languages but has also promoted understanding and appreciation of the nation's oral legacy through such means as holding conferences on praise singing, among the most important of the traditional African oral arts.
One of the National Library's more ambitious projects--and one that is drawing increasing attention in other parts of Africa--involves placing "information kiosks" in libraries that will provide easily accessible information on subjects such as poverty alleviation, the prevention and treatment of diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Other information will assist entrepreneurs in establishing and growing small businesses.
John Mayor, Information Technology Manager for the eThekwini Municipal Library in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, says that the kiosks have been a big hit. "We call these sites Centres of Excellence," he explains. "They include computers in the library that have been modified to offer resources such as templates for creating resumes, which has proved to be quite popular. We also started a free e-mail program. Once someone registers for it at one library, they can then sign on and get or send e-mail at all the other libraries in the municipality."
These projects and services are all elements of the redefinition of libraries that many across Africa have called for. One of those who supports this concept is Professor Kingo Mchumbo, an expert on the role of information in national development and a professor of library science at the University of Namibia. Says Mchumbo, "African libraries were wrongly designed in the first place because they were modeled on the needs and behavior of people in developed Western societies. And, because they were built under colonial rule, their structure and services presumed a level of literacy and a familiarity with printed material, along with a well-established information industry, that just does not exist across much of the continent." He continues, "In my view, libraries must focus on the basic aspirations of Africans and help to meet survival needs. They must also provide information that improves agricultural production, helps people build better houses, and make use of government programs. And all that has to be in indigenous languages. Libraries also should look toward the free exchange of information: people to people, lectures, cultural activities, etc. The South Africans," Mchumbo concludes, "are moving very well in these directions. They are helping to redesign and reinvent the whole concept of libraries in Africa."
Timbuktu and Beyond
John Tsebe is quick to point out that while South Africa may be at the forefront of creating libraries meant to serve African needs and both promote and preserve African knowledge, the country hasn't been developing these concepts in isolation. Under the aegis of the National Library, Tsebe has initiated regular meetings among librarians across the continent to brainstorm ways to improve and upgrade their institutions. One such conference, held in May 2005, which the National Library helped to organize, was entitled, "From Papyrus to Print-Out: The Book in Africa," and focused on an ambitious set of topics that ranged from the preservation of books and oral literature to the impact of information technology on book development and on literature.
But perhaps no undertaking better illustrates the continental vision that underpins the development of the National Library than the story of the Timbuktu manuscripts. These materials, some of which date back to the 13th century, are primarily housed in private collections in the city of Timbuktu, in Mali, and have been estimated to include some 300,000 texts. For hundreds of years, Timbuktu was a traditional center of Islamic learning and scholarship; works on law, theology and science, along with poetry, biographies, dictionaries, Qur'anic studies and other materials have already been catalogued. This treasure house of knowledge highlights the fact that Africa has a vital and deep-rooted written record of its culture and history that can stand beside its many oral traditions.
In 2001, during a state visit to Mali, South African president Thabo Mbeki offered his nation's help in preserving the Timbuktu manuscripts. An international effort is now underway to build an environmentally stable library to house, preserve and digitize these materials, efforts that also aim at making them accessible to scholars across the globe. As part of this project, the National Library of South Africa has helped to train Malian conservators and worked with South African architects, engineers and builders who are involved in conceiving and constructing the new building.
In launching the project, President Mbeki hailed it as the start of "our challenge to reclaim and embrace the rich African heritage which we were denied for centuries by Eurocentric perspectives, colonial racism and racial domination."
Reclaiming South Africa's "rich African heritage" is very high on the National Library's agenda in light of the long years of segregation that afflicted the country. Through centuries of colonialism and continuing on through apartheid, officials of South Africa's national library system were not focused on cataloguing and preserving literature, artifacts and other materials relating to the history of the nation's nonwhite population. In that context, Mandla Hermanus, a program assistant at the National Library's Cape Town campus, explains that the choices made about library collections have far-reaching cultural, historical and social effects. "There is no such thing as neutrality," Hermanus says. "Every decision made about what to keep and collect, what to display and highlight, or what to discard are all substantive, even political decisions that reflect power realities at any given point in time." Until very recently, Hermanus says, these power realities included "the story of how one group of people were regarded as deserving of a particular status and the others would be relegated to the background."
But things are changing. Hermanus, for example--a young black professional--says he became interested in a career at the National Library when he realized the role it could play in redressing what he calls society's disrespect of indigenous languages. "This work has helped me in taking my own Xhosa culture and language seriously," he notes. "If you speak an indigenous language, even in the townships, people think you are either uneducated or not up with the times. You have to mix your Xhosa with a lot of English for people to think you are a learned person. I want to help change that and the National Library is a platform for me to be able to do so. If indigenous languages become respected in the National Library, they will be respected in the townships."
Hermanus cites one example of the library's historical marginalization of black Africans: a long-forgotten collection of 19th century sketches of the first inhabitants of South Africa, the Khoi San people. "They were just sitting there, in a back room, being stored," he says. "It was only when they were submitted to UNESCO and declared World Heritage Objects that they began to be properly catalogued and taken care of. What else is in the library that we don't know about?" Hermanus wonders, pointing to the many uncatalogued holdings in the National Library's storerooms. "What other treasures deserve our attention?"
Melanie Geustyn, the Special Collections Librarian at the National Library campus in Cape Town, is also troubled by this question. "I'm surprised at the things I discover we didn't know we had," she says. "Manuscripts, diaries, a lot of handwritten letters. We even found come Sumerian cuneiform, which is one of the earliest forms of writing." Geustyn has also come across other rare finds that are among the Library's holdings, such as a letter from Moshweshwe (ca. 1787-1868), a South African king, thanking French Emperor Napoleon III for sending guns to fight the British and a voluminous collection of photographs of many of the other South African kings as well as chiefs of the Khosa tribe who were confined in South Africa's notorious Robben Island prison during the apartheid years. The library is also home to the first written dictionary of indigenous South African languages.
In addition to identifying and cataloguing important materials already in hand, the National Library staff have dedicated themselves to, as Professor Ralebipi-Simela puts it, "going backwards in order to go forwards." What she means is making the effort to collect books and other materials by black South Africans that were published overseas by those who went into exile during the apartheid years or who simply could not have their work recognized at home.
It is unlikely that the library will miss cataloguing any publications in the future. Every book, magazine and newspaper publisher in South Africa is required by law to deposit copies of their products with the National Library in order to preserve the nation's culture. Of course, that also means that the library could quickly run out of space--but that's where technology comes in.
Library officials believe that much of what they hope to achieve depends upon information technology. Dr. Marthie de Kock is the Executive Head of Information Communications Technology for the National Library. She started as a librarian a quarter century ago and can recall the card catalogues that were then used to search for books on shelves. "But now," she points out, "you can do everything online. You can search the collection not only in your local library but in any library in South Africa. And because of our inter-lending voucher program, you can borrow a book from any library in South Africa." De Kock also has high hopes for digitization as a way of increasing access to books and knowledge. "Our vision," she says, "is that one day, a reader will be able to click on a link online and read any book they want." She says she is also working toward the day when all libraries across Africa will be able to link to each other and serve each other's users. "The goal," she explains, "is to make access to all the libraries seamless, no matter where you live on the continent. We want to get to a point where anybody in any village in Africa can log on over the Internet and tap into any kind of information they need."
That idea may not be as far over the horizon as it would seem. A few years ago, John Perry Barlow, an American writer and thinker on computer connectivity who has often visited Africa noted that almost everywhere he went--though sometimes it took more effort than others--he was able to log onto the Internet. "Even," he noted with satisfaction, "in Timbuktu."
Kenneth Walker, who currently runs Lion House Production, a South African strategic communications firm, has had a distinguished career as a journalist. In the U.S., he worked for ABC News, covering the White House as well as the U.S. Justice Department and also served as a foreign correspondent. Before that, for 13 years he reported for The Washington Star newspaper, which assigned him to South Africa in 1981 where his work earned several of the most prestigious awards in print journalism. In 1985 he won an Emmy for a series of reports he did on South Africa for the ABC news program Nightline.