We got a lot of response to our featured article last week . . . an article from the Africa Report about Petina Gappah’s efforts to rehabilitate the Harare City Library. You can read it here.

Below, we share with you the opinion of a Kubatana subscriber. He hopes that the library will be re-stocked with relevant books.

Your efforts of trying to resuscitate the functional state of City of Harare library are noble, but be careful not to fall into the ‘ZimPost Office’ fate. The fate of the obsolete. To be relevant your effort should be focused on creating e-libraries as opposed to re-stocking hard copies mostly from donated sources. My experience of these donations is that they are garbage and do not solve our predicament but instead trap the brains of the youth in mental slavery. That kind of reading stuff has created mass exodus of supposed professionals to the Diaspora resulting in Africa becoming a training ground. Good brains are sapped from Africa. The pride reflected by the style of your writing displays that of a lost soul of Africa; there is no pride of the literature that creates the spirit of pan-africanism in your documentation.

Yes as much as there is a need for the library restocking this so called Victorian literature can not equip the African child to think like an African and to develop in a sustainable African way. We need library books that build a strong base for an African child to be conscious of her/his responsibility to build Africa, not to run away from Africa. Library books that liberate an African child from the shackles of euro-centricism to afro-centricism, these books cannot be provided by charity organisations.

Poverty for Africa is mainly caused by wrong literacy. For example you talk of high literacy levels in Zimbabwe that is at 98 percent in Africa, but what is the impact of it? Zero. Even though Zimbabwe is naturally very rich, in our minds we see deep poverty, we run away the moment we get opportunity together with our families. Who will build Africa?

In short your effort is remarkable. I am just expressing my anger in the current and previous Harare City Library (the so called Victoria memorial) for its disservice done to our African child by providing through the literature content, wrong literacy.

Hope your efforts will transform the outlook of the Harare City Library through proper stocking of relevant books such as books authored by Matigare, Chinua Achebe, Walter Rodney, Oswald de Rivero, Samir Amin, Dambudzo, Babu just to mention a few. These books will assist to restore African identity and dignity and place us on the correct roadmap for development.

- Panganai

Selective racism in Zimbabwe . . . here we have Nathan Shamuyarira’s nephew, Peter Chamada, in a conversation with farmer Ben Freeth, saying that the Chinese and Indians are “friendlier” people than the whites. According to him they’re better to do business with.

Listen to this excerpt from the award-winning documentary Mugabe and the White African here.

Read Amanda Atwood’s blog on why some foreigners are more equal than others.

After the SADC Summit in South Africa this week, the media carried differing interpretations of the results of the meeting. Reports were seen to concentrate more on which party proved best, who got embarrassed, or whom the SADC team least liked. Analysts however, have said that the ordinary Zimbabwean emerged the winner from the recent SADC Summit. Read the story here

From Pambazuka:

Helen Zille the leader of the DA in South Africa believes that uprisings are no longer necessary. She says that there is more power in the vote! An excerpt of the speech reads: “One day, May 18 will be regarded as a turning point for our democracy. It will be seen as the day that South Africa started to move beyond race, the day our democracy progressed to the next level,” said Zille at Frischgewaagd in the North West.

She said she chose Frischgewaagd to celebrate Youth Day because it was the first ward with no white voters where the DA won in the recent local government elections. “We are celebrating June 16 here because this election result represents a watershed, not only for the DA or for Frischgewaagd, or even the North West – but for South Africa,” she said.

“Because we now live in a constitutional democracy, we do not need uprisings to bring change. We all have the power of the vote. And you, here in this far corner of this province, have used your power to bring the change you want to see.”

Read more