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South African Book Publishing Since the End of Apartheid LOGOS 13(2)_crc 12/6/02 1:45 PM Page 90 LOGOS Dateline Pretoria South African book publishing since the end of apartheid Francis Galloway During the past twelve years, the South African book publishing industry has had to make the tran- sition from functioning in a colonial and apartheid context to operating in a fledgling democracy. On the eve of the 1990s, industry spokesmen had been looking forward to the challenge. Were their hopes fulfilled? Both mainstream and independent publishers, at A senior lecturer in and two different seminars hosted during the early coordinator of the post-graduate 1990s, articulated these hopes. Their expectations programme in Publishing Studies can be judged from the following extracts: in the Department of Information • “Education is the one most crucial important Science at the University of problem that has to be resolved if our future is Pretoria, South Africa, Dr to be worth having. It will require a different Francis Galloway has wide kind of courage, a different kind of energy and commitment and expertise...The role of oppo- research interests, including sitional publishing does not disappear just publishing history and the because the government changes. Publishers of relationship between book integrity are or ought to be endemically inde- production, publishing pendent, always prepared to give voice to criti- cism of the establishment, always the philosophy and market supporters of freedom and creativity, holding expansion. Previously she was open the doors for discussion and debate.” the head of the academic division (David Philip of David Philip Publishers) of Van Schaik Publishers. During • “Will we get an economy less subject to the abuses of the politically powerful? Will we get the 1980s, she was a senior a country in which everyone’s cultural choices researcher at the Centre for are respected, even equally respected? Will we South African Literature get a democracy? ...We are more likely to carry Research, where she acted as on reaping the consequences of years of clumsy editor of an annual survey of the and misguided social engineering and interfer- ence in the economy.” (Douglas Reid Skinner multilingual South African of Carrefour Press) literature system. She is the • “By acknowledging that the New South Africa author of a monograph on will be a multicultural South Africa, one accepts Breyten Breytenbach. that all cultural groups will be equal, and that publishers will be able to publish for any of Email: [email protected] them, in whatever language is most suitable.” (Kerneels Breytenbach of Human and Rousseau) 90 LOGOS 13/2 © WHURR PUBLISHERS 2002 LOGOS 13(2)_crc 7/6/02 10:50 AM Page 91 South African book publishing since the end of apartheid • “A democratic government must of necessity ideology. On the eve of the 1990s, the remedy the actual publishing situation as Afrikaans literature was the most flourishing swiftly as possible...Out of the ashes of literary legacy of the colonial era. apartheid will emerge a new superpower...An 2. Book publishing in African languages bene- indigenous publishing house such as Skotaville fited from missionary patronage until 1948. will find itself being the centre of attraction on After that, its growth was controlled and an unprecedented level...By the year 2000 it directed towards providing a brand of didactic will have grown into a young giant.” (Mothobi and moralistic literature for the school market. Mutloatse of Skotaville Publishers) The apartheid system of “Bantu Education” included Language Boards created to “develop” Today answers can be provided to the questions on African languages and to recommend pre- this wish list. What happened to the independent scribed books. In the words of an African- book publishers during the 1990s and to the dream languages scholar, N Maake, literature in these of a new (African) order for the publishing indus- languages “has been under siege since its try? Did a great new era dawn for school textbook birth”. publishing? What became of the “bad cultural engi- 3. By 1966, all English writing in South Africa neering habits” of the previous era? What happened had become, according to the writer Richard to the vision of a multicultural and multilingual cel- Rive, “virtually white by law”. English writing ebration of homegrown books? Did the relationship by black South Africans was systematically between the industry and government change? Did repressed through bans, arrests and exile. the industry grow during the 1990s? The answers to Overseas publishers provided outlets for anti- these questions are mainly negative. The reasons apartheid voices within the country as well as are imbedded in the history of the industry in the for revolutionary literature written in exile. second half of the 20th century. 4. In the 1960s and ‘70s, local oppositional pub- lishing grew in spite of the repressive political * * * * * atmosphere, under alternative or independent imprints such as David Philip Publishers, A D According to Nicolas Evans and Monica Seeber in Donker, Ravan Press, Taurus and Skotaville The Politics of Publishing in South Africa (reviewed in Press. LOGOS 13/1), South Africa’s social history has been sustained, even delineated, by what was and * * * * * what could not be published. Both colonialism and apartheid circumscribed the exchange of ideas, On the threshold of the 1990s, high hopes were stunted the development of identities and nurtured pinned on the growth and vitality of independent the artificial growth of ideologies concerned with publishing houses in the post-apartheid dispensa- exclusion. But always there were – and still are - tion. However, mergers and acquisitions during the publishers (and books) opposing the order of the ‘90s blurred the distinction between mainstream day. and independent publishers and to a large extent Four strands of indigenous publishing can be also between local and international concerns. identified: Independent publishing houses faded as a result of under-capitalization, changing market profiles, 1. Book publishing in Afrikaans grew out of lib- funding problems and loss of staff through the dis- eration from the Dutch linguistic heritage and persal of intellectuals into the new ANC govern- the struggle against Anglicization. It became ment departments. The decline of the independents politically and culturally entrenched with the was a major loss, since mainstream publishing can- victory of the National Party in 1948, after not perform the role of innovation and renewal. which Afrikaner-owned publishing houses During the 1990s, a new school curriculum was played the dominant role in providing school introduced, with the intention of shifting the textbooks that could entrench the dominant emphasis from rote learning and authoritative 91 LOGOS 13/2 © WHURR PUBLISHERS 2002.
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