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Stephen Mpofu, Perspective

Zimbabweans must shout hurray to God for our high literacy rating on the African continent and one that an education official recently put at 98 percent.

Such a feat could only have been achieved courtesy of God’s loving kindness which saw blacks triumph over racist colonialism and during which some impoverished parents sold what little property they treasured such as chickens, goats, cows and even oxen to send their children to school in order for them to free us from foreign rule and oppression.

The educational support that parents gave to their offspring to lead them from oppressive rule to freedom continues to trend in the minds and lives of people, this communicologist included, who lived through colonial Rhodesia to this day.

Colonial Rhodesia

In short, Zimbabwe’s liberation might have remained a myth without God’s intervention through a successful armed revolution by gallant sons and daughters of the soil, otherwise outnumbered and outgunned by the colonial army.

But God did not end his benevolence at that.

He chose, and continues to talent a few men and women to boost the revolutionary waters of functional literacy for a brave new future for Zimbabwean generations.

We are talking here about writers whose transaction relationships with book publishers must be such that they raise the waters, call it lives if you will, so that the boat can sail on smoothly until the angel of God blows the trumpet to end this world of trials and tribulations.

Unfortunately, however, relations between writers who must immortalise past tribulations to present the present and the future with good-hope guidelines are touchy and go to the extent that some authors might stop burning the midnight oil and in the process sending Zimbabwean literature into the shade, if not the throes of death altogether.

The story trending quietly right now is that some publishers are not paying authors their due royalties in order for the latter to be incentivised to continue to write books for present and future generations.

An education official in Harare, who preferred anonymity, suggested to this communicologist a few days ago the need for some “monitoring mechanism” by an authoritative body to ensure that souring relations between authors and publishers are restored to normalcy so that literature continues to manifest and boost Zimbabwe’s literacy rating on the African continent.

Today, book-shows have become a rarity in our country and one can only attribute that situation to an absence of exciting new literary works to offer to the reading public.

Contrast the above with the frequency of musical shows by local and foreign singers and one will wonder why Zimbabwean poets, playwrights, historians, and novelists are remaining in the woods.