When the gift of reading is turned down

The longest-serving ANC president, OR Tambo, said: “Let’s tell the truth to ourselves, even if the truth coincides with what the enemy is saying. Let us tell the truth.”

Stereotypes, I opine, are often based on hard facts.

To cut a long story short, the upkeep and maintenance of government institutions seem to be many South Africans’ nemesis.

The closure and/or vandalism of public libraries, especially in townships, would probably make the racist former prime minister of SA, HF Verwoerd, feel vindicated, given he was quoted as having said that if one wanted to hide something from black people, then a book would be the ultimate Fort Knox.

Long before the Covid-19

Just like some philosopher aptly put it: “Books are dangerous. They contain ideas.”

pandemic, library attendance was dwindling, with these facilities mostly being visited for school projects or studying for examinations.

By the way, it is disheartening that some books from the city’s main library are damaged beyond repair and have to be destroyed.

No wonder we have a hotheaded, militant, violent, reactionary, gossiping, weakminded, murderous, quick-fix obsessed, greedy, boastful and easily indoctrinated youth nowadays, as their despised activity — called reading — has an ironically calming effect on any short fuse; a thing that runs concurrently with logic.

Just like some philosopher aptly put it: “Books are dangerous. They contain ideas.”

However, to our faithless and hopeless youngsters, encouragement of reading is akin to teaching Shakespearean plays in Japanese or Yiddish.

Luyanda Marlon Kama, KwaDwesi