Homemade library builds a bookish community in Soweto

Behind an unmarked gate on a residential street in Soweto, Thami Mazibuko makes his way down a corridor and up a stairwell, all lined with books.

Here, in his childhood home, the 36 year old has turned the upper level into a bookstore and library, seeded with 30 of his own books, now overflowing with hundreds of donations.

The slender man’s face lights up as he rummages through the stacks to find some of the most popular reads – currently Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi, the first novel in English by a black South African.

“Books; they put you in other people’s shoes,” Mazibuko said. “I want people to visit here and be transported into other communities.”

He can’t remember having any books in his home as a child.

After he finished school, he moved into the formerly white suburbs of Johannesburg, staying with relatives who were artists, with a home full of books.

When he moved home, he brought his growing personal collection with him. “Readers who do not have access to books, your old aunties, they are like ‘you have books! Can I borrow one?’” he recalled. “And I am like, okay, aunty it’s fine.”

So began the Soweto Book Cafe, officially founded in 2018.

Now, he sells books to those with enough money to buy them. And he offers a membership fee of R50 a year for people who want to borrow books – though in reality, he loans them to almost anyone who asks.

“That’s one of the reasons I started this place, to advance literacy and to provide the community with access to books and information, which is a basic human right,” he said. –