Organisation of African Youth

When you hear your cabinet ministers making silly grammatical errors or your State President mauling the State of the Nation address, give them one piece of advise: READ NOVELS
 
Books are the best teachers of morals, manners and language. Even a work of fiction is ever so well researched that most of the seemingly incidental bits, are actually facts. Sadly, we are the death of literature. There just is little reading left inAfrica today, especially in the youth. The only people who one finds reading, are mostly politicians: reading their speeches badly.
 
Young people today do not find much wisdom in recreating the beauty of poetry in recital, bringing to life the joy of our maze of life brewed into story. Studying is only perusing for the examination, leaving students with high pass marks and near zero knowledge. This leaves us in the dangerous, scary tide of ignorance.
 
I used to sell books a couple of years back. I would go buy popular volumes at a charity shop near my apartment for R5 each. I would then sell them on the internet for R50 to R100, depending on the writer. Not anymore! The books have become cheap and are not being bought. I stopped when I found one I was selling for R60 was now going for R1 on the same website – and not finding a buyer. It was titled “Long Walk to Freedom”
 
I cannot blame internet, because I know that reading is a habit that you cannot drop. It is impossible to hear of a youngster caught stealing a book in a library. The new generation of our youngsters simply does not have the culture of examining literature, because their parents have forgotten how to be life teachers. Adults who are readers are role models. Reading needs to be encouraged.
 
Without literature, a nation is faceless and disheveled. It loses its makeup of so much diversity and complexities.
 
The habit of reading brings the joy of isolation while travelling in another world of wonder in words. This excitement teaches us to love reading so that we cannot be swindled by insurance companies during contract signing. Reading sharpens the mind and makes it younger. The mind is like a shark. A shark has to swim all the time: when it stops it dies. The mind has to assimilate all the time to restore its intelligence.
 
We should see more promotion of reading, where it catches attention without fail. At Taxi rank of people queuing for hours, doing nothing but waiting is the best stop to promote reading. Such hours can be well spent in a book. Publishing houses, if they still want to make money, should start a major campaign for reading, using popular methods and celebrities.
 
They may help bring back a powerful habit. Else we shall have a society of moving zombies and simpletons who braai by burning books
 
All Best
 
Mordekai Chikambure Shumba
President – Organisation of African Youth (OAYouth)
Johannesburg