Words on the streets

Scrolling through Instagram I came across a meme that said: “Ever realise how surreal reading a book is? You stare at slivers of a tree for hours on end, hallucinating vividly.”

This pithy observation is particularly poignant when you consider the state of reading in South Africa. Every couple of months or so, the media rolls out a story about the dire situation. Case in point, the recent Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) reported that 81% of Grade 4 pupils cannot read for meaning. It’s easy to become desperate thinking an entire generation is missing out on the endless knowledge and entertainment these trippy slivers of a tree hold.

Joining the Underground Booksellers’ walking tour of Joburg, I realise all is not lost. This is not one of those “Harry Potter tours of London”. Rather, this literary experience traces the city's informal book trade and its rich reading culture. It also explores the history of bookselling in Johannesburg, including the first black-run library, the era of censorship and the innovative ways modern readers discover books. In a nutshell, it’s a 150-minute deep dive into a world of reading with which many of us are unfamiliar.

BRIDGING WORLDS

The tour is run by a Joburg inner-city gem Bridge Books. This independent bookshop in historic Marshalltown specialises in African literature (particularly voices that may not be easy to find) and offers a large selection of new and second-hand books. It also has an extensive children’s section in all 11 official languages and hosts various events, including a kid-friendly “story time”, book launches and writing workshops.

Bridge Books was started by writer and journalist Griffin Shea, who grew up in small-town Louisiana, where he spent a lot of time reading, especially in the local library. After working as a journalist in Zimbabwe, he moved to Johannesburg in 2008.

Shea began his bibliophilic Jozi journey in 2016 by trading books out of a backpack to booksellers at Park Station. He later named his store for the bridges (Queen Elizabeth and Mandela) that link the city that he crossed regularly and, as he explains, “after a metaphorical bridge — one that Bridge Books is trying to be, connecting mainstream publishing with grass-root readers and booksellers”.

Meeting at the store on a rainy Thursday, our small group includes a tourist wearing a T-shirt from her local library, a foreign journalist, a photographer, and myself. We’re joined by Shea and a nattily dressed Isiah Dludla, who works at the bookstore and guides some of the tours.

Shea begins by talking about the wide-ranging role Bridge Books plays in the city. This includes managing and stocking street libraries in Alexandra and Soweto (a project the team is planning to extend to the city centre) and micro-improvements to Beyers Naudé Square that include planting flower beds and clearing rusty barbed wire.

The store also promotes the area around it as a “Literary District”, where an enormous amount of book reading, selling, and writing occurs. Shea explains: “You have over 60 booksellers plus the public library, you have over a million and a half books floating around this area alone. Not including all the private schools that have opened. I think one of the things we don’t celebrate enough is that this really is a city that loves education and learning.” His assertion is backed up by the National Reading Barometers 2023 survey, which reports that when defined broadly, most adult South Africans do read. Interestingly, 78% read for enjoyment and 87% of homes have some printed material, though most commonly religious books and pamphlets.

During the pandemic the shop embarked on remote work. “We had had a lot of requests over time for books that weren’t available because they were out of print or banned during apartheid,” Shea says “We started with Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey’s work because we had a request for it. He had a strong influence in South Africa and helped inspire early land movements here.”

The Bridge team then started looking for South African works it could reissue and print, specifically out-of-print books still in the public domain, meaning they aren’t covered by copyright law. Working with volunteers from the University of Pretoria, they started with Herbert E Dhlomo’s The Girl Who Killed to Save and Valley of a Thousand Hills, which are now available for the first time in decades. Post-Covid the team is continuing this work and currently in the thick of Thomas Mofolo’s 1925 Sesotho version of Shaka.

THE HUSTLE

Leaving Bridge Books, our intrepid group ventures into the city to meet the booksellers. Our first stop is around the corner at the Rand Club, Johannesburg’s original gentlemen’s club. Standing in the foyer of this beautiful 1904 building, Shea explains how important books were for people in the early mining town — by the mid-1890s there were 11 book shops in the city.

Here we meet James Findlay, who runs his eponymously titled store from the basement of the grand old gal. While sipping coffee, we trawl through shelves packed with valuable tomes, timeworn maps and vintage prints. Findlay’s entrepreneurial spirit is evident as he explains how he is trying to rethink what a bookshop is. What was once part of an expansive billiards room now serves as his shop, as well as an events space that hosts jazz nights and talks.

Shea and Dludla pepper our conversation with fun facts about the area and its literary history as we head into the bustling city. From the location of original bookstores to the personalities that once traversed these streets, the duo know it all. This, of course, includes talk about the prolific banning of books during apartheid and the creative ways readers hid these forbidden treasures.

As we stroll through the streets, we encounter interesting characters, from sellers peddling a small selection of Unisa textbooks to the team at Christian Fellowship Services. Though the latter isn’t strictly a bookshop, it does offer a sizeable collection of bibles, hymn books and ministers’ manuals in varied African languages. Owner Spencer Macaskill and his tight-knit team of Dorcas Mzoli and Cynthia Simelane have been selling religious garb here for 23 years.

Next, we meet Henry, a Kenyan bookseller who has a stall in the humming Joubert Street market. Alongside a tailor and some amakipkip, he has an extensive selection of self-help books and used magazines. A keen reader, Henry admits he is a “product of my product” and sticks to motivational titles.

Religion and self-help are king in the city. Shea reasons that these are popular genres everywhere, but “books that are very negative, with a ‘will South Africa survive tone’, don’t do well. What people in the city are trying to figure out is what makes life better. So what sells are books about relationships, whether that is with God, your partner or your children. They’re generally “uplifting” or, he maintains, “readers are looking at the past in an interesting way, so thinking about Thomas Sankara or Patrice Lumumba and liberation from different regions”.

Shyline Ariberto’s book stall has an impressive array of Wilbur Smith books alongside romance queen Danielle Steel and multiple copies of Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like. Ariberto comes from a large family of city booksellers and dreams of visiting her home in Zimbabwe, which she hasn’t seen since she arrived in the City of Gold four years ago. She says she doesn’t read her own books because she prefers to read in Shona and because her stock is wrapped in plastic for protection.

We also pop into Limbada & Company in Diagonal Street. The store is 103 years old and located in the once “non-white” area of Ferreirasdorp. Owner Imtiaz Limbada was born in the area and took over from his father in 1982. He proudly shows us a photograph of his grandfather, who was born in 1883 in Kosamdi, Gujarat, and started the business. Today the store, like many others, specialises in textbooks, religious texts and Zulu books.

A TALE IN THE COFFIN 

While the tour is an optimistic crash course in the  city’s literary industry, the one dark spot is the Johannesburg City Library. Built in 1935, this beautiful building in the heart of the city consists of eight collections and 1.5-million books. Closed for extensive renovations for three years in 2009, the library reopened in 2012. Unfortunately, it closed again in May 2021 and will stay that way for the foreseeable future, allegedly due to further renovations and fire safety regulations. This shuttering is heartbreaking for the inner-city residents who use it daily. Apart from reading and borrowing books, the library is also a safe space for youth and a crucial community hub.

A silver lining to this woeful tale is that the Johannesburg Public Library does make use of an international reading app called Libby. It provides access to public library services online, including borrowing and reading books, though you will need a compatible mobile device, laptop or PC and access to wi-fi or data to use it. I signed up while doing research for this article and it was easy and quick, and something I see myself using long term. While this is a great service, it cannot offer a physical space to those who need it. Equally, you must have a South African ID number and address to use the app, so it excludes the many immigrants who have made the city their home.

As maddening as the state of the library is and the impact its closure has had, the high point of the tour isn’t the stores. Rather, it’s the individuals. Whether it’s the Bridge Books team or industrious booksellers supporting their families, you cannot help but feel energised by what you encounter. It’s also a reminder that as intimately as you think you know Joburg, this complex urban space has so many stories — endless pages still waiting to be read.

The two-and-a-half-hour tours take place from Mondays to Saturdays and prices start at R650.

For details and to book: bridgebooks.co.za