Storyteller and author Gcina Mhlophe celebrated 20 years of promoting literacy and the culture of reading in SA schools through the launch of two books in Braille on Saturday.
The book launch, which was held at Bluff Showgrounds in Durban, and was part of Mhlophe’s literacy campaign celebration called Nozincwadi – The Mother of Books. The books were put together through the help of the South African Library for the Blind.
According to the 63-year-old, who is also an actor and playwright , the launch was part of the Novel Book Storytelling Festival.
She said celebrating the 20-year anniversary was a big milestone for the Nozincwadi campaign, which started small in 2001.
“We are happy and humbled by the fact that the campaign has been running for 20 years. When we started in 2001, we did not know it would even last beyond two years. It has continued through the years, thanks to our partners and people who donated their family libraries to us,” said Mhlophe.
“We presented the two books at the Novel Book Storytelling Festival, and the response was amazing. These books mean a lot to me. Through running the campaign I have met many blind people who could do amazing things. Working on these books opened my mind.
"I challenge people who claimed to be able to be open to people with disabilities. I know we don't treat them kindly but we can learn a lot from them even though we ordinary people think we don’t have a disability.”
The Nozincwadi literacy campaign was named after Mhlophe’s great-grandmother who loved collecting books as well as newspapers and kept them though she could barely read or write.
Mhlophe said in her quest to teach the culture of reading she named the campaign after a woman who believed books can breathe magic into a human being. Through Nozincwadi, she and her team have donated millions of books to different schools in all nine provinces in SA.
“Though the box that kept my great-grandmother’s books and papers was thrown away, I felt I needed to continue with her legacy. We have travelled all over SA with the team. We donated books according to the province’s main languages. For example, when we donated in the Eastern Cape, we donated Xhosa, Afrikaans and English books. When we get there, we normally read for the children, perform and they also read for us in return.”
Mhlophe said when the campaign started it was meant to last for only 18 months. But due to the demand for books and with more people donating, it went on and 20 years has since passed.
As part of growing the initiative, four years ago Mhlophe and her partners began doing extreme makeovers of school libraries and buildings, some of which did not have libraries.
Her upcoming project is the library she wants to build at a school for the deaf in Chatsworth, Durban.
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