By Field Ruwe, EdD
In the 1960s and 70s, we were voracious readers who devoured books by authors black and white: Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka, Mills and Boon, Jack Higgins, Frederick Forsyth, James Hadley Chase, Ian Fleming, Alan Paton, Wilbur Smith, Agatha Christie, David Copperfield, Shakespeare, and many more. We delved into a vicarious world, transitioning from reality to the world depicted within the pages of the book, embarking on a voyage of knowledge acquisition.
The willpower, determination, rage, courage, and unwavering spirit of the character Okonkwo in Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” gave us the strength and knowledge with which to confront British colonial masters. “The Eagle Has Landed” by Jack Higgins revealed how Nazi officer Oberst Radl, acting on Hitler’s orders, devised a plan to kidnap and kill Winston Churchill. Higgins provided a captivating peek into the clandestine operations in both the British and German governments and a glimpse into World War II.
My favorite, “In God’s Name” by David Yallop, uncovers the truth behind the murder of Pope John Paul I (Albino Luciani), just thirty-three days after his installation in 1978. Before, I had regarded the Holy See as the epitome of holiness on Earth. However, my perspective drastically changed upon learning how the Vatican Bank lost a quarter of a million US Dollars through corruption. It remains a riveting eye-opener.
Each well-crafted narrative like Yallop’s led us down various avenues of personal growth, enriching our writing abilities and refining our spoken English. It helped us to think rationally, act intelligently, and apply some of the knowledge in our daily pursuits. Diversifying our reading materials by exploring various genres such as fiction, non-fiction, and poetry broadened our knowledge of different subjects, cultures, and historical eras. This helped cultivate our intellectual curiosity and encouraged a continuous pursuit of learning.
Regrettably, the culture of reading has significantly diminished in Zambia. Many individuals, including graduates, are finding it hard to read and finish a book. Worse still, a good portion of the population will not finish a newspaper article. According to the World Culture Score Index (WCSI), Zambia ranks among the countries with the lowest levels of reading-focused culture on a global scale. The aversion to reading spans across various age groups and academic levels from primary school to university, leading to low levels of IQ (Intelligence Quotient).
As trivial as it may sound, reading serves as a crucial instrument for the advancement of a society and is indispensable for our development as a nation.
“It’s regrettable we are not a reading nation,” Kenneth Kaunda said when he officiated at the opening of the Lubuto Library in 2007. He continued, “yet vast amounts of knowledge, useful creative information that could change you and me are still in the print media, in black and white, in books and magazines.” He added, “If you read, you’ll come out of the darkness that blurs your vision and keeps you in the vice-grip of poverty.”
Why are we not a reading society? To address this question, it is important to first explore the history of reading. Ancient Egypt played a significant role in the development of reading, with the invention of a form of phonetic writing called hieroglyphics around 3250 BC and the subsequent creation of papyrus in 3000 BC. Phonetic reading was instrumental in enabling the Egyptians to record their past, the present, and use the records to shape the future. Reading also played a crucial role in the development of Ancient Egyptian technology, which ultimately led to significant progress in architecture, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine.
The Library of Alexandria, Egypt, was founded due to the skill of reading, making it one of the oldest libraries in the world. The City of Alexandria became the capital of knowledge, attracting scholars from around the globe and transforming the library into a prominent research institution. Reading at the Library of Alexandria led to the rise of scholars, among them, Apollonius of Rhodes, who composed the epic poem “Argonautica”; Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who calculated the circumference of the earth; and Hero of Alexandria, who invented the first recorded steam engine.
The establishment of the first universities in Europe was influenced by the culture of reading. The word “read” led to the founding of the University of Oxford in England in 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Oxford has since cultivated a culture of reading among its students who commonly refer to their studies as “reading Philosophy” instead of “majoring in Philosophy.”
Let me now address the question: “Why are we not a reading society?” The answer is to be found in the annals of history. For blacks, reading is a hard-earned culture raced with blood and death. In the 1500s, there was a belief in the white world that a black person was less human, inherently unable to read, and unintelligent. He was, therefore, held in contempt as racially inferior.
In Southern Africa, the phenomenon of denying Africans the right to read was orchestrated in the 1890s by the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony Cecil John Rhodes, who strove to ensure Africans remained illiterate and trapped in a system of indentured labor. “We have got to treat the natives, where they are in a state of barbarism, in a different way to ourselves,” Rhodes proclaimed in his Glen Grey Speech of 1894.
The British imperial government, influenced by the Rhodes racist doctrine, intentionally omitted Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) from the royal charter during the establishment of universities in tropical Africa between 1920 and 1948. The exclusion prevented the establishment of a University of Northern Rhodesia that would have created a reading society and by extension a knowledge-based society.
The queen’s consent would have meant the University of Northern Rhodesia aping the University of London in its admission criteria for students, course content, examination protocols, and academic affairs. At the time, the University of London was laying a foundational culture of reading in all the African universities under its wings to help first-year students build strong reading skills and a lifelong passion for books. The result was the rise of Africa’s early writers like Chinua Achebe (University of Ibadan), and (James) Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Makerere University), Joseph Coleman de Graft (University College of the Gold Coast), George Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor-Williams (University of Ghana), and Kwasi Wiredu (University of Ghana).
As for Zambia, the absence of a university at the time of independence resulted in Zambians missing out on a foundation in vigilant, rigorous, scholarly, and enjoyable reading essential for academic achievement and national development. Kenneth Kaunda, who needed a myriad of personnel for the labor market, was forced to rely on the racially-motivated Lockwood Committee that recommended subpar teaching methods and curricula that did not prioritize general reading essential for cognitive development. Instead, it emphasized the cramming type of reading for passing examinations. Consequently, the University of Zambia witnessed a significant decline in reading proficiency among its graduates, reflecting a catastrophic outcome that can be seen in most of the 40,000 graduates.
Since its establishment in 1966, the University of Zambia, left to its own devices by the British government, has failed to emerge as the source of the culture of reading in Zambia. Zambian education experts appointed to boards like the Higher Education Authority, and the Zambia Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ZSG-QA), have failed to adopt policies that can turn the University of Zambia into the cornerstone of Zambia’s education system in the manner of Harvard and Oxford. Consequently, the university has failed to achieve the goal of providing relevant and quality education crucial to the country’s human capital development. Without a culture of reading, UNZA will continue to produce graduates who are professionally incompetent and internationally ineffective.
The growing apprehension over the diminishing reading culture among Zambians is of grave concern. With the global economy having shifted towards a knowledge-based framework, Zambia’s future is at risk due to the reading crisis it faces. Unless immediate action is taken to address this decline, all aspects of the Zambian state, including its economic, political, and social components, which heavily rely on knowledge, will continue to deteriorate. Establishing a campus and national readership promotion initiative at the University of Zambia is essential in fostering a reading culture among students and the wider community. Without a culture of reading, the University of Zambia is an ivory tower which, when we go downstairs, we go straight into the sewer of knowledge.
The rights to this article belong to ZDI (Zambia Development Institute), a proposed US-based Zambian think tank. On May 19, 2022, a comprehensive proposal was delivered to President Hichilema through Principal Private Secretary Bradford Machila. Author Dr. Field Ruwe holds a Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership. He is affiliated with Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.
