Clare-Rose Julius
African languages in the South African publishing industry: Hans Pienaar chats to Clare-Rose Julius
Clare-Rose, can you introduce yourself briefly?
My name is Clare-Rose Julius and I am the manager of a self-publishing company. We started in 2009 and since then our catalogue has grown to 200 authors. Self-publishing is just booming and it is definitely a growing industry. Research I did a few years back for PanSALB, to look at the overall demand for African literature, books in South Africa, what has come out of that is … there is a small demand for books in alternative or other South African languages. The reason is that the common mode of language has been English and a lot of young people now have grown up with English. It’s basically a second language, but they use it as their first language and the African languages have kind of become a second language, and if they need to read they can’t even read in that “second language”, they read in English, mostly. And for that reason the demand for vernacular books in South Africa is very small.
And due to the demand’s being small, it creates a knock-on effect: the bookshops don’t order books because they see there is such a niche industry that they are not going to stock books in the vernacular languages. Unless you’re a very well-known author they don’t even … if you go there with an emerging author’s book they won’t stock it, because there’s just no market.
The other problem is accessibility and the price of books. The price of books is very high especially in terms of the publishing process. If you publish a book you have to get someone to translate, or edit. It is very difficult, especially for us English-speaking people, we cannot really go through the book, if it is in another language, that’s now Afrikaans excluded. Because you have to find someone that is professional, either a translator or editor, and the cost in terms of finding a professional doing other languages, the costs are very high, basically.
Do you have any books in your catalogue in vernacular languages?
No. We’ve got two Zulu books and we’ve got Sesotho books, short stories, but even all three titles that we’ve published, we’re only helping the authors in the publishing process. We don’t distribute, because as I’ve said, there is no market and the bookshops weren’t even interested in taking the books on.
You have mentioned before that another problem is that there is no standard Zulu for instance.
Not a standard Zulu. The KwaZulu-Natal Zulu is different from the Johannesburg Zulu. The dialects are completely different. Say for instance you have a writer in KZN … I think there are over 80 Zulu dialects … I just have to check that … but there are so many dialects in one language, which means that writing a book in KZN Zulu might not be the right Zulu for someone that sits in Pretoria or someone that sits in Limpopo, because it’s not the dialect used in that specific location or area.
And you find that readers will actually reject a book that is not in their dialect?
Exactly.
But surely on the ground there must be a demand for people’s mother tongue. Has your research shown a wish … or that there is a potential for mother-tongue books?
Ja, there’s always a potential and opportunity as well. Because for the older generations that still need to read I feel that we don’t cater … There is not a lot of local content available for local people. It is one of the reasons why our country is grappling with a low reading culture, because there are not a lot of books available, as I say, the accessibility. The amount of international content in South Africa overcrowds the local content. I ‘m dealing a lot with local authors and the problem currently is that there is no market, they can’t really sell their books because there’s no support. And I believe, again, it’s a whole cycle, a whole knock-on effect. If we had more local writers writing in whatever genre, or dialect, or language that they want to write … if we have more local content and it gets distributed to local people it will basically create a culture of reading. And the more we create a culture of reading the more writers we are going to get, because now writers will see that their content actually gets absorbed. Because currently this notion that there’s no reading culture or that it is very low in South Africa … I say no, I say it’s because there is no access to content. And the cost of books. Those are basically the two problems we’re experiencing.
It seems to me this is not the kind of problem that can be solved by the market. The state has to come in in some way.
Most definitely. The state support is needed. Industry support is needed. Industry support is very low. Just working with my authors, with emerging authors and self-publishing authors and the problems I’m experiencing on the ground with the bookshops specifically is that … the chances of the book ending up on the bottom shelf or not being promoted in the bookstore are very high. The window period or timeline for a book to sell out of the store normally is anything from two to four months. So the author basically has four months in which he needs to promote his book vigorously. If there is not the demand for that book, the bookshop will lose interest and they will start sending the books back. They work on consignment basis. I do understand their point of view as well – they are operating in this current economy and they’re running a business, and if something doesn’t sell they need to make space for other titles that can sell.
On a state level, on the level of policy, do you think there is a gap there?
There is definitely a gap. I have just seen an author. She’s basically a child. She wrote the book when she was seven years old, she published the book when she was eight years old. The mum explained that they are experiencing so many problems. There’s no support for young writers like her. For instance, the MEC for education invited her to speak at a function, twice already. At one of the functions they … a workshop for young writers … even over those two times … the MEC has a free copy, but the MEC hasn’t even told them, OK, we are going to take twenty or fifty books; we are going to give them to these young writers. There’s no support. They say OK, it’s just a limelight thing, but government will need to do something.
The other thing is they went to the Department of Education to see if they could get the books in as a setwork title, and the department wanted to change it too much, and I’m laughing when the mum said, the child said, you know, you’re not going to change my brain. And it’s these kinds of things, they need to be more flexible and there’s no government support. VAT on books, for instance – I understand that a lot of the times the pricing of the books is high because the price of the paper is high, but the government can help us by not having VAT on books. Local literature … how many books are available in your local school library?
Then you go in there and your suppliers are normally your big publishers like Pearsons, Macmillan, and your international publishers. The amount of content versus the big publishers and the international content versus local content is probably 80% to 20%.
But you’re speaking about local content in all languages, not the vernacular.
Yes, everything across the board.
So this little girl, she wrote a book in English.
But she’s very fluent in English. But if I say that’s a universal language and that is a lot of what the current generation is doing as well, in terms of their reading patterns. They won’t go out and read in their actual mother tongue. They will read in English because they were taught in English. And that is a problem, because where are we going to be in a few years’ time?
Do you think one of the reasons for this problem is that there is not much of a stress on the vernacular languages in schools?
That could be. The thing is what they teach in schools as well is they worked out a standard, so it’s pure Afrikaans and pure English. It’s not a certain dialect.
It seems what one would need is more of a holistic language movement. What are the chances of something like that arising, say, in Zulu?
I wonder … I’m not really certain what has been done in the education industry. I know that there are certain things being rolled out, for instance the National Library Services rolled out 100 classics a few years back. They translated all the classics like Alice in Wonderland into Zulu and all our other nine languages.
Do you think another reason for the little demand in vernacular languages is that people disparage their mother tongue … they look down on it?
I can use myself as an example. I’m from a very small town. I grew up Afrikaans-speaking. I’ve now been in Johannesburg for almost 20 years and with the people I interact with on a daily basis I mostly speak English, and when I have to interact in Afrikaans, I kind of feel I … it’s very difficult for me to explain myself in Afrikaans, where previously it was the other way around. And I think with a lot of Zulu-speaking or Xhosa-speaking people that’s the same way. The only time that they’re speaking in their actual language is when they’re at home. Which is very bad, because you do lose touch with your mother tongue. And that’s not really good, because as I said, where are we going to end up in three years’ time?
Coming back to the problem of standardising a vernacular language, for instance Zulu, how should one go about achieving that? Do you think the fact that at the University of KwaZulu-Natal there is an instruction to start lecturing as much as possible in Zulu will aid the process?
I think it can, because there are still people that are still struggling with the English language and they can actually be helped. And if they have done it in Afrikaans in previous years, why can’t they do it at the University of KZN? Because there are a lot of Zulu-speaking people. Why can’t they do it in Zulu, and that might help because they can relate to that and they can understand that, because not everyone can understand English so well.
A lot of people are saying Afrikaans can be used as a model for other languages.
I believe so too.
What is the solution overall? What should the state do, right at parliamentary level, say?
I think they should seriously sit down and have the will to put policies in place. One of the first things they need to look at … VAT on books should be discarded. I seriously believe that it should not be added on to books. The other thing is that they need to have more literacy projects available at school, in the vernacular languages as well, and they should promote reading and writing. Because there is a lot of emphasis put on reading but not a lot on the writing side, and everything works together and, I’m going back again: the more people who read, the more people who will write.
What is your view on the call for bilingualism in schools, in other words that the teachers get instructed to give mathematics in English and Zulu or English and Xhosa or whatever the local language is? Do you think such a thing is possible?
It would be very difficult. I should say it should be according to the geographic position where you are. Like for instance if it is based on KZN, they should have the two options of English and Zulu. If you’re based in the Northern Cape, it will be English and Afrikaans, with more emphasis on Afrikaans. That’s what they’re doing anyway. If you look at the Eastern Cape, it should be English and Xhosa. I’m not sure how that’s going to work in places like Johannesburg. You’ll have to look at what the more dominant language is. Because it’s going to be very difficult … then you have to find a specific candidate or teacher that can speak all three languages.
Unless you have different schools – say you have a Sotho school where you do tuition in Sotho and English and another school not so far away where the tuition is in Zulu and English …
… ja, and then people can choose. That’s also an option.
Tell us about the project you have in the rural areas to distribute books in local languages and local areas.
Basically there’s currently no one doing it. There’s no one distributing into the local market and this is one of the things that we want to do. We’ve got a section 21 company, African Narratives, and we’re actually busy with a project to try to find out what the demand and opportunities are to create something on the ground. There’s a guy called Griffin O’Shea, and he has unearthed about 80 rural … not really rural, but informal traders. Some of them sell only books, some of them will have an ordinary shop and they’ll have books at the back or someone will sell food and will have a magazine stand or a few books, various pricing points, and he’s also found that the same thing found in downtown Joburg is happening in Pretoria. What he’s found very evident is that many of the Nigerian people coming over will have their cellar and they will actually bring Nigerian content and sell it out of the cellar. I think if that kind of informal trading of books exists already on the ground, there is a definite need and opportunity to expand it right across South Africa. And this can basically be the key to the accessibility of books to people, and everyone in the local communities in South Africa.
And also boost the vernacular languages.
Ja, as I say, the kind of content … we had a quick meeting with Griffin the other day … and he said the content that normally sells is your self-help books. Fiction doesn’t really do all that well, because there’s that notion that a lot of readers can’t get their mind … or grapple with the terms that … it’s fantasy … and it’s make-believe. They would much rather read about other people’s self-help sayings and biographies and Christian content … there is a lot of Christian content that sells very well, especially in the Nigerian shops.
And in the Nigerian shops, are these books in pidgin sometimes or in English?
I think they’re probably not only English books. They’ll probaby have other languages like French as well. I’m pretty sure it’s not only their language.
The argument has been made that vernacular languages should be promoted as part of a broader transformation project, that you won’t really have transformation, you won’t have people getting rid of their apartheid inferiority complexes unless they develop their own mother tongue. Would you agree with that?
Sho … it’s a really difficult question. I really don’t know. Because my view is … it might help them with a kind of sense of identity, but it’s very difficult, because I see that apartheid is in the past and we need to move forward from that. And people are people. But I know there are people who are still struggling with these ... terms. But it’s also how they grew up. It’s various factors that give various views to people.
You have said there is a need to create a platform. Can you explain what you mean by a platform?
I mean space where authors can … their stuff can actually be sold. Because as I said currently there’s no support. The bookshops don’t really stock indigenous language books unless someone comes in and asks for a book. It’s in many cases on order and many of the authors they do stock are authors that are well-known. And some of this content is also available in schools. The problem that our authors are currently experiencing is that … there’s not really a platform or sales system in place to get their books in front of the people who matter. The Department of Education, for instance, it’s so difficult to get the books in the schools. Why should it be so difficult?
Why do you think it is so difficult?
I think it’s because you have your … five … you have your monopolies, your publisher monopolies happening and the small guys shut down. In terms of educational publishing you’ve got different kinds of publishing, and educational publishing is extremely difficult to get into and if you don’t have a budget, the barriers of entry are extremely high. Because how the process works is that the Department of Education will have a call for submissions and a tender meeting, or whatever meeting they have, and they’ll say this is what we need and then the publishers basically have to pay writers to get all the content together, they have to pay the editors, they have to pay everyone. Then you take your content, and it’s not to say that your content gets accepted. So you already have to pay out, let’s just say R50 000 to get the book produced, and it’s not to say it will get accepted. And for a small guy to do that, a small publisher, emerging authors to do that, it’s just very difficult.
And this requirement, how much is in the vernacular languages?
I have no idea. It’s probably a very small percentage …. I know the SA Book Development Council also give out money … if there are publishers publishing in indigenous languages. And I know that the NAC also rolled out a call for proposals for indigenous languages.
So there are a few things happening. My impression is that when you look at it nationally there is a lot of emphasis on developing infrastructure, on developing physical infrastructure, but there’s not a very great understanding of the importance of language, indigenous languages …
And also local content. The Department of BDE has now rolled out the thousand libraries thing, they are going to basically create a thousand school libraries right around South Africa. But I really, really want to know: one, who supplies them with content, and two, what type of content will they accept for those libraries, what kind of books are going into those libraries? And as you say, if it’s a rural, KZN school, surely the content going in there can’t be the same as the content that will be accepted for Mitchell’s Plain schools. They need to change, and they need to add more Zulu books and not English titles. It should actually be a split of 80:20, where 80 is Zulu, or maybe 50, I don’t know, but the language that is mostly spoken there. Especially with the young … early childhood development … and even the gogos that teach and learn, they do it in their home language.
There isn’t much reading material available for them, in their mother tongue.
There is Nal’ibali, they are doing a lot, their ECD programme, but they’re trying to get as much content, especially in the language the child … they feel the child needs to read. They try their best to get that content out. … English and vernacular. They source across the board.
Do you think especially black authors prefer to write in English or in the vernacular?
I had the same question for Zakes Mda at the Jozi Book Fair. He specifically wrote in English, but he said he actually started in indigenous languages. He’s written a few books in indigenous, but because the market has been so small he decided to focus on English books … It’s not that he’s done only English books, but I think it does have a big impact on writers deciding it’s best to basically write in English, because the market is much bigger.
Except that the market for black writers in English is also not very big.
Ja. But I believe that independent publishing is changing quite a lot. The market for black writers is not big, again in terms of the traditional publishing system. One, a lot of the writers are writing in English, their second language. So it’s not easy for them, there are a lot of grammatical errors, their writing style needs to develop, they need help, and when you send a manuscript like that to a publisher they turn it down immediately, they don’t even look at it. The barriers of entry are just so difficult because the traditional publishers they basically have a business to run, they pay for the book to be produced and if they see this book isn’t going to be able to generate profit then they are not going to take it on. And that pushes a lot of authors to do it themselves.