Book acquisition trip to Johannesburg, Mbabane, Manzini and Maputo 2023

From 2 to 22 november 2023 the ASCL carried out the annual book acquisition trip. This time the trip went to the inspiring Jozi Book Fair in Johannesburg, followed by visits to eSwatini and Mozambique. Almost 1200 books and over a thousand digital newspapers boosted the Southern African collection in Leiden.

The Jozi Book Fair is quite unique on the African continent: whereas they do sell books and their aim is to promote the reading culture among youth, the backbone is the community activism of Khanya College. Rooted in the anti-apartheid struggle it now focuses on other fields of global injustice. Staff of the book fair donned T-shirts featuring the rallying cry “Free Palestine”.

Given the vibrant book publishing culture in South Africa, this visit allowed to focus more on the lesser visible books by self-publishing authors and the smaller presses. Contacts with Bridgebooks (right in the CBD of Johannesburg), proved to be very fruitful.

Half a week in the mountain kingdom of eSwatini was a great stimulus for the ASCL’s  rather small Swazi collection, though a significant number of the titles are understandably published in South Africa. These books are not only published by major publishing houses like Macmillan and Oxford but also by smaller players such as Vivlia which presents itself as “an independent, black owned South African Company”.

The trip to Maputo  delivered in every possible way: the amazing bookscene in this great historical city led to 375 new titles for the Leiden collection. The newspapers Savana, Noticias and Domingo sold digital copies of their last 3 years. And from Aminuddin Mohamad, one of the very few Muslim authors in Mozambique, ASCL got a second edition of his very hard to get Demolidora dos prazeres (Dispute over Islamic Funeral Rites).

Gerard van de Bruinhorst