Reading in Zimbabwe
By Tinashe Mushakavanhu
28 September 2011
I have been in the past critical of our reading culture as a country. In a round-table discussion with writers, Emmanuel Sigauke and Christopher Mlalazi, I questioned, ‘isn’t it strange that we are supposedly the most literate country on the African continent and yet a population of illiterates?’
To a greater extent, Zimbabwean people read to pass exams. It is just a matter of routine. Our whole education system is a manufacturing process of careerism. We all have to study to become Accountants and Doctors and Lawyers and Engineers and whatever else.
Unfortunately, we inherited these mechanical reading habits from our colonial past. Then and now, we are conditioned to be robotic and perform our functions without questioning them. We were not encouraged to read, to develop our mental and spiritual selves. We were blindfolded from the liberating potential of reading. We were taught to condemn reading for the sake of reading and deprecate it as self-indulging luxury. Or, if were encouraged to read, it was often the Literature Bureau morally sanctioned didactic tales.
Some elements of our society still hold on to that archaic view. And since the economy of the Zimbabwe of recent years has been scrapping at the bottom of bottoms, the nourishment of the belly has obviously taken precedence over the nourishment of the mind. But this is a perennial Zimbabwean problem. We don’t buy books. We don’t give away books as presents. We don’t borrow books from the library. We don’t have bookshelves in our houses.
To be fair: we read. In Zimbabwe, a book is a communal pet, shared by everyone. When I was growing up, I read books; mostly Pacesetters or John Grisham even Chinua Achebe that were passed on from one person to another, until the whole township had read the book. Sometimes, the book arrived to you with missing opening pages or no final chapter. You had to make up the beginning or the end of the story. And it still made sense.
However, there is a crisis of books in Zimbabwe. Bookshops are hard to find; and when you do find them, they disappoint. There are no books; and if there are any there, they are just text books and manuals funded by NGOs. It is as if books do not matter at all. Books enhance the imagination of a society. Books are the best recreation.
Pavement bookshops used to be a feature of Zimbabwean towns and cities. The guys stocked every title. If one didn’t have it, he would know one who had it. Sadly, the pavement bookshops are not there anymore. The infamous Operation Murambatsvina campaign swept them into oblivion.
The highlights of my childhood, were the moments, I huddled with my young siblings on the big brown sofa, while Amai read to us. This was a daily evening ritual that we always looked forward to. We took turns to read out. Our imaginations were peopled with fascinating characters. We took flight in books to other worlds. Our mother was the pilot. Sometimes, we asked Amai why a character was sad or crying. She would instantly become a storyteller.
She equipped us with the gift of reading and comprehension. Sometimes she encouraged us to speculate answers to our own curiosities. She encouraged us to read and to imagine. Unfortunately, most parents don’t read to their children any more. Children encounter books at school and those experiences with books are often bad ones. Mechanical. Forced.
Those reading sessions equipped me with the gift of reading, of comprehension, of imagining. In fact, books were as much a part of my life. As a kid, my family moved house a lot. My childhood was a series of movement. We were always constantly sitting at the back of removal trucks, waving goodbye. One moment you were making acquaintance with a street and its inhabitants, the next you were starting all over again.
Books became my constant companions. My mother had boxes of them, all kinds – chicklit, Mills & Boon, African, English, Indian, even Russian in translation. There was always something to read in the house. Books were always staring and daring you to open them. I read them out of curiosity. I read them for awareness.
Reading is taking part in many journeys.
