Literary awards and the publishing industry must reflect our racial diversity

● When Media24 released its now legendary all-white list of award winners in its annual literary contest, judged this year by a panel that did not include one black African or Indian judge, I was one of the first writers to wonder if this country had not turned into Orania, where people of colour do not exist.

Before we go on, let us be clear: I was not in the running for any of the awards. My objection was not based on the colour of the winners, but the constitution of the panel, which raised eyebrows. There was not a single black African judge.

In a country with a thriving literary culture and an oversupply of black literary scholars, it is unfathomable that a literary contest of any type cannot tap into this talent.

Literature is not about race. It is about humanity in all its diversity. A literary contest has to reflect the reality. Had the judging panel been representative of our cultural and racial diversity, no-one would have raised a murmur.

Previously, the Sunday Times literary awards have been won by white writers in both the nonfiction and fiction categories. There was no outcry, mainly because the adjudicating panel was racially balanced.

To its credit, Media24 has since issued an apology for the oversight. It has undertaken to be more circumspect in future.

But fixing the racial diversity in future judging panels will not address the real problem: the serious lack of diversity in the book publishing industry.

The industry is so white you would think you were in one of the Scandinavian countries.

Let me illustrate this: in my writing career I have published 11 books, nine in English and two in my mother tongue, Zulu.

In getting those books published, I have worked with four publishing houses — Jacana, Penguin Random House, Kwela and Oxford University Press.

In all these instances, the people I have dealt with from the publishing houses have been white. Even for my Zulu novel, the publisher was a white woman.

She can’t read or speak the language. She is in charge of a department that publishes books for schoolchildren in indigenous languages, yet she cannot differentiate between Zulu and Sotho.

She receives the manuscripts, which have to be accompanied by a cover letter and synopsis in English, then outsources these to an external professional reader, who will assess them and decide if they are publishable.

After the reader has OKed the manuscript, the writer is paired with an editor. In this instance my editor was an external person. Outsourcing the editing of a book is pretty standard in the industry, locally and internationally.

What is not normal in the instance of Oxford University Press is that the publisher in question relies entirely on outsiders — a professional reader and an editor — in managing a manuscript, mainly because she can’t read the languages she publishes.

When I expressed shock at this, the woman was nonplussed, pointing out that she would be pairing me with a good editor.

The industry … needs more black executives, commissioning editors, designers, copy editors Fred Khumalo, above

Yes, I was impressed with the editor. Not only is he a native Zulu speaker, but he is also an accomplished author with numerous novels and short story collections in the vernacular.

Boasting a PhD in literature, he is an accomplished lecturer at one of the universities. I was happy to work with him. I wondered why publishing houses couldn’t get people of his stature and racial background to bolster their ranks.

By definition, literature is about new ideas, about charting new paths into the future of society, about society talking to itself.

It’s about challenging stereotypes, outmoded thinking and suggesting new ways of being. But all this becomes a pipe dream if the industry that is meant to blaze new trails needs transforming.

At the height of the heated debate about the all-white awards, somebody said Media24 was an Afrikaans company, so it could not be expected to pander to calls for racial diversity.

Media24 might have been a company with its roots in the Afrikaans community, but the products that make this company financially formidable are consumed by black people. I’m talking about the newspapers and magazines and other media that are the lifeblood of the company.

As a result, the company has no choice but reflect the diversity of this country in its management. Racial insularity poses a serious danger to the industry in that it denies it growth and vibrancy.

In the long run it might even render the publishing industry irrelevant. If the publishing industry is to stay relevant and grow, as it should, it needs more black publishing executives, more black commissioning editors, designers and copy editors.

The constant refrain from publishing houses has been “We cannot find the right black professionals”. That, of course, is nonsensical. I can draw up a respectable list of black people who hold honours degrees in publishing studies. When some of them couldn’t find jobs in book publishing, they resorted to journalism and advertising.

If you don’t want to find them, you won’t find them.

Khumalo is the author of 11 books, and is a PhD candidate at the University of Pretoria.