/ 17 August 2010

For the love of the word

For The Love Of The Word

In the tradition of the Weekly Mail Book Week, this festival aims to revivify Jo’burg’s cultural landscape

William Kentridge might be correct in naming Johannesburg the second-greatest city after Paris, but it has been without a literary festival ever since the annual Weekly Mail Book Week passed into history.

That is set to change with the Mail & Guardian Johannesburg Literary Festival to be held at 44 Stanley Avenue from Friday September 3 to Sunday 5.

Taking as its subtitle and theme, Being Here Now (Who are We? South Africans in 2010), the festival revives the spirit of the book week and helps mark the paper’s 25th birthday this year while continuing its pioneering ethos.

Former M&G editor Ferial Haffajee began the process when she asked me, as books editor, to look into setting up a festival that acknowledges the publishing houses, authors and readers who make their homes in Jo’burg.

The idea was endorsed and has been vigorously supported by Haffajee’s successor, Nic Dawes, who will deliver the keynote address on September 3.

He will speak to the political and historical moment for the country and its citizens, in which hard-won freedom of information, expression and opinion are under threat.

Poets, playwrights and prose writers battled apartheid with words, ignoring or evading restrictions on their writing to convey truths and consider possible futures for South Africa.

Sixteen years after democracy, just when writers are settling more comfortably into dealing with the seemingly mundane everyday as their chief subject, along comes the Protection of Information Bill and associated clampdowns.

We have reached a critical juncture and, just as the M&G carries the torch of its forerunner, The Weekly Mail — forged as an independent newspaper speaking truth to power — so too will the literary festival aim to emulate the book week that played a significant role in the political, literary and cultural landscape of South Africa.

My festival co-director, Corina van der Spoel of Boekehuis, and I have long dreamt about and discussed a literary festival in Jo’burg, where more books are sold than anywhere else in the country.

We have been fortunate to work with South African publishers in Jo’burg, Cape Town and Durban in a spirit of collegiality to create a weekend that we hope will stimulate those who love words and how they are used.

Highlights of the festival include the panel discussion, “Being Here: South Africans in 2010”, and the announcement of the winners in non-fiction and fiction of the Penguin Prize for African Writing.