The Idea of Reading in Early 20th-Century South Africa

Early 20th-century South Africa saw the emergence of a range of liberal reading initiatives aimed at encouraging a black reading culture. What ensued was a lively public debate about reading and the uses of the book which included not only the liberal philanthropic groups that gave support to these projects but also those African readers and intellectuals who found themselves the targets of the reading initiative itself. In the first part of this article, I highlight the prominent role played by liberal advocates of the book in establishing the broad parameters of the book-reading encounter in South Africa, particularly as it related to emergent black reading communities. I give attention to the nature of this developing reading consensus and the assumptions about reading and the world of the book that it encoded. In the second part of the article, I explore the ways in which this consensus was negotiated by African readers and intellectuals. To this end, I look at some of the traces and fragments of an on-going debate about reading and its social and personal value recorded in the contemporary African press. The aim of the article is not only to ascertain how Africans responded to the liberal incitement to read but also to address some of the contestations over the meaning and use-value of reading during this period as part of a more general history of reading in early 20th-century South Africa.