Celebrating African women who are fighting for our languages in the society
What started as a casual conversation between two South African women in 2016 has led to the formation of a publishing organisation, Boni Books Publishers.
A first of its kind, Boni Books publishers is a publishing organisation with a co-mandate to promote African languages in schools, libraries, broader community and the business sector. They publish books, reference books, study guides in the languages many South Africans speak and understand. They are further more committed in providing material which is relevant to the twenty first century generation which is inclined to technology.
Founders, Mzamo Mayekiso and Fikile Khuboni, said they’ve always been passionate about publishing and African languages. “I told fikile that I was in the publishing at the time and she’s a lecturer at Wits University in the field of African languages, and we found that we had something in common and passionate about African languages,” said Ms Mayekiso.
They added that they were concerned that if they do they do not do anything to promote African languages, the languages will die. “We felt like are languages are sidelined and we thought that our children need to speak, understand and are able to read African languages,” said Ms Khuboni.
They said this needed to start at grassroots level – schools where most children can have access to them. Touching on their mission, they said they wanted to publish work in this industry and make it available so they don’t just talk about it, but they do it. “ We felt like we had the expertise to develop this material and wanted to ensure that generations and generations do not lack these books and material. We want it to be easily accessible,” said Ms Mayekiso.
Sharing these sentiments, Ms Khuboni added that being a language specialist at university she’s noticed that languages such as English are developed. She said when one goes to the library they’d find many shelves for English, but for African languages it’s just a shame. “I asked myself that if we are not taking an initiative to promote our languages, who else will? I realised that publishing books in our languages would help, because if we’re not publishing in these languages, where are children going to find books to read in their African languages?” she said.
They added that many institutions and government policies support the promotion of indigenous languages, but no one is executing these policies. “Everyone is saying we need to promote our languages, but nothing is being done, we need to see things happening, we need to see some implementation and have these books developed or we’ll lose our languages,” said Ms Khuboni.
Touching on challenges they’ve encountered, they said they had to work hard to be recognised by the society. “ We are competing with publishers who have been in this industry for years, we believe we have something great here, but we had to start from scratch and fund ourselves, it hasn’t been easy,” said Ms Mayekiso.
They said they had to learn how the industry works and it took years and dedication to get them where they are now. “Finance has been a huge challenge for us, right now one of our books has been included in the Eastern Cape catalog but we need finance to go out and market our books to different schools,” said Ms Khuboni.
The ladies said the quality of their product speaks on its won and they are determined to promote African languages and help aspiring authors tell their own stories in their languages.
To learn more about the organisation click: https://bonibooks.co.za/.
