So Much for the African Cultural Renaissance

Today I’m using my blog to rant about the steady reduction of library services in my hometown (Alberton, South Africa) Apologies to any foreigners who find it boring. Feel free to ignore me, I’m used to it. :)

I am however curious whether this is an issue in other countries / cities as well.

I have been an avid user of libraries since I was a child. My parents enrolled myself & my sisters as soon as we could read. Because I love books, reading & writing etc libraries have been an important part of my life & often a refuge when things were a bit tumultuous for me.

One of the first things we do as a family every time we move to a new area is joining the local library. I currently live 200 metres from the local library & used to make a practice of walking up every second Saturday morning to exchange my books, read the community notice board & just generally wander around enjoying the atmosphere. I even took out audio books whenever I could to play in my car on the way to work.

When I joined the local writers group (some of the greatest people I have ever met!) it met on Saturday afternoons in a room within the library building which was very appropriate.

Some time ago the writers group was told to find another venue as it was now policy not to allow meetings outside of library hours. Fortunately another venue was found & the group carried on.

Since them the library started only opening every second Saturday. A little inconvenient but still tolerable. More recently it stopped opening on Saturday mornings at all. It is only open Monday to Friday till 17H00.

This may suit schoolchildren & civil servants who do not contribute to the economy 8-5 every day, but it means that as an adult reader it is nearly impossible to make use of this “service” which is after all paid for by the taxes of those working adults.

I find this extremely sad considering the low literacy levels in South Africa & President Thabo Mbeki’s alleged commitment to the African Cultural Renaissance. Many of our people can’t afford to buy books & the library is the only chance many hard working adults will get to be regular readers.

We should be creating more opportunities for our citizens to read, not taking them away!