Reflections on Zim BookFair 2006
Lizzy Attree
Zimbabwe International Book Fair 1-5th August 2006
This year’s Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF) may well have been its last. Like the once beautiful Harare Gardens in which it was held, it was in sad disarray. When I arrived in Zimbabwe in July one community publisher thought it had already happened, other small publishers and Non-Governmental Organisations with publishing units had no idea the Fair was still on. Over the last six to eight years dilapidated dusty Harare has lost the support of the international community. Corruption, mal-administration, over-dependency on donor funding and the assumption they would pick up the tab, has forced donors from Norway, Sweden, Holland and Britain to leave contracts un-renewed. Independent publishers from South Africa have reluctantly stopped exhibiting and Frankfurt has withdrawn its official link and considers it “not worth a penny”. However one bookseller from South Africa (UNISA), Ethiopia and Pakistan respectively still came to join what was a valiant effort by Zimbabwe’s publishers to keep active against the odds.
The annual Indaba, which once hosted Nobel prize-winning authors such as Wole Soyinka and Nadine Gordimer, was reduced to a one-day conference entitled ‘Africa – the cradle of conversation’. Not only was security and ticket-selling diligently performed by school children, but the overwhelming irony of the title was lost on nobody in a nation where conversing too freely about Mugabe and the heavy-handed ZANU PF ruling party is forbidden under tight media laws. The devaluation of Zimbabwean currency on 1st August 2006, dubbed the Zero to Hero project in the national press, for which according to finance minister Gono “failure is not an option”, meant the dominant topic of conversation was the ridiculous state of the national economy, which had already begun cracking the heads of locals and visitors on the first day of the Fair.
There are not many countries in the world where you are not encouraged to trade in your own currency. On the first day of the Fair twelve million Zimbabweans were given just 21 days to switch to an entirely new currency. With over 1000 per cent inflation, members of the Zimbabwe Women Writers (ZWW) group scrutinised the new sample bearer cheques printed in the government-run Herald newspaper and wondered whether, if carefully cut out, these too would soon be valid currency. Or indeed whether their electricity bills despite daily eight-hour power-cuts would be cheaper if paid in the new currency. If Zimbabwe is a state of mind, at present it is a state of constant confusion and stress-related paralysis. A bemused shaking of heads was quickly followed by nervous laughter.
There was little evidence at the Fair of the deep paranoia induced by the CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation) whose undercover agents are present in all walks of life from local buses to pubs and universities. But the fear of violence soon became evident when GALZ (Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe) were chased away from their stall on day three in what is becoming an appalling annual tradition at the Book Fair. In an unrelated incident soldiers wearing the infamous red berets of Mugabe’s militia were seen beating people in the streets of Harare later that evening. The large security presence around the perimeter seemed more concerned with keeping people who couldn’t afford the $2m (£2-4) entrance fee out, than ensuring the safety of those within. With books at a similar price I soon became a mobile library service for cab drivers, security guards, hotel maids and nurses. Real libraries make a substantial contribution to Zimbabwe’s intellectual development, but due to fuel shortages Rural Libraries and Resources Development Programme (RLRDP) is raising funds for more donkeys to pull their mobile cart to villages they have yet to reach. Indicative of the devastating problems facing one in five Zimbabweans, HIV/AIDS information, was freely available on almost every other stall.
The laudable attempt on the ZIBF website to pitch the continent as “The cradle of civilisation and culture; education and philosophy; medicine, science and technology; world religions; the alphabet, ancient scriptures and modern literature; philosophies of the environment and the discourses of ecology” is sadly undermined by the situation Zimbabwe finds itself in today. Without trying to talk down a nation and its people, whose patience and tenacity in the face of absurdity, poverty and hunger defies belief, the idea that these topics could lead to fruitful discussion of an international calibre is laughable. Last year’s Indaba descended into a racist, anti-colonial, nationalistic exercise in speech-making and grandstanding that past participants are now unwilling to repeat.
As a consequence the Indaba was an inward looking, navel-gazing exercise, which adopted the less ambitious subtitle Promoting Authorship. Similarly un-ambitious were the orators heralded by the programme as experts in their field, who made trite and predictable comments about the submission of manuscripts, which belonged in writers’ workshops rather than podium based lecturing. One speaker who claimed to be a copyright lawyer declared that “copyright was invented in 18th Century Britain, before printing” and that “a king” passed a law to prevent illegal copying. His 40-minute ramble was hard to stomach (lunch was not provided) and left unchallenged despite some chuckles and a dwindling audience. However ZWW’s Virginia Phiri did usefully remind us that writers’ associations do have a stake in ZIMCOPY (the Reproduction Rights Organisation of Zimbabwe) and must make use of this to receive royalties and prevent piracy.
Introducing the Zimbabwe Book Publishers Association (ZBPA) literary awards evening the deputy dean of linguistics, University of Zimbabwe, misquoted Macbeth, painfully failing to rhyme ‘in thunder, lightening or in rain’. He went on to announce ominously “we’ve gathered this evening like the witches in Macbeth but don’t worry, we are not planning to kill people.”
Awards night laughs continued with statements such as: “The author, like every other service provider, has been de-motivated by inflation.” No doubt Beckett and Joyce would agree. The head of the EU Commission, Xavier Marchal, donated money at the last minute to enable the literary awards to go ahead. Despite only 42 entries in 12 categories, top prizes were given to ‘Ama Books, Lleemon Publishers, Mambo Press, Weaver Press, and Zimbabwe Women Writers. College Press, Longman and Zimbabwe Publishing House (ZPH) shared textbook awards, which had by far the highest entrants. Citations of startling blue cover designs, and excellent tables of contents revealed perhaps more than the judges intended about the selection process.
The ZBPA also failed to speak out against the curbing of intellectual freedom and publishing that has occurred recently – with journalists, artists and writers prohibited from freedom of speech and expression – in the case of Chenjerai Hove this has resulted in a retreat into exile in France and Norway. Hove is one of the few writers published by almost all the publishers in Zimbabwe: Baobab Books, College Press, Mambo, Weaver Press and ZPH. Perhaps if the Association or the Trust had taken a stand, using his case as a precedent, there would be some basis for continuing to support a non-governmental venture that provides a platform for publishing and defends fundamental freedoms in a much-depleted environment. Without this reassurance, the ZBPA/ZIBF appears complicit or at least obedient to a defunct regime that rules by manipulation and fear.
Zimbabwe was once the publishing capital of southern Africa and the glossy brochure still boasts that Harare is “now recognised as Africa’s book capital”. It used to host the best book fair in Africa, complementing the more commercial book fair in Cape Town with a lively forum for debate, discussion and performance which the predominantly white Cape Town fair always lacked. Cape Town hosted its first official international book fair in June, but sub-Saharan Africa must now fit its enormous creativity into a handful of fairs: the Ghana book fair is every other year; Nigeria has an annual fair; Kenya and Uganda both have successful annual book weeks run by the East African Book Development Association. But years of neglect, as with Zimbabwe itself, have rendered it obsolete. As many a wise African has said: “We cannot eat books.” With few visitors and even fewer sales, neither can the publishers.
The Gnarls Berkeley song playing as I wrote this in Harare speaks volumes “I can tell you know how hard this life can be, but you keep on smiling for me”. Behind those smiles is a profound tension and sadness. Publishing was once the key to liberating the people of Europe from the tyranny of Bibles they could not read for themselves and publishers in Zimbabwe still have that goal in mind. But, having educated a generation, Mugabe has switched to an Ian Smith-style racism: “If you want to keep truth from a black person, put it in a book.” The 2006 ZIBF was a masquerade etched in dust on ironed recycled tracing paper, blowing in the wind.
First published in Britain Zimbabwe Society newsletter