African Writers: Promoting writing to excellence

African Writers: Promoting writing to excellence: As a published author, I pride in the profession, that like most arts have helped to preserve history. On thing I lament though is that Afri...

African Writers: Celebrating Women's Month

African Writers: Celebrating Women's Month: As we enter the month of August, there is a bit of warmth in the air, the days are getting slightly longer and it is of course accompanied b...

Celebrating Women's Month

As we enter the month of August, there is a bit of warmth in the air, the days are getting slightly longer and it is of course accompanied by the wind. But that is nothing to be gloomy about as we have had a fairly not so bad winter with a bit of rain once or twice depending on the region one is in. As a woman it is rather intimidating to write about 'women' as a subject. But of course it has to be done one way or another without shying away from the topic. the women's month is celebrated more in a political context, as it was in acted by celebrating women's day, thereby recalling the historic March to the Union Building in 1956 regarding the pass-laws. The women were indeed united as they stood together from different backgrounds and races. They spoke with one voice and to-date we commemorate their bravery. As the rest of the month is noted as a women's month, one has to now ask if indeed we are not just re-celebrating the some women in our modern era over and over. Most hold white colour jobs, drive big cars and have big titles. These are barely a fraction of the rest of the woman population. We are celebrating the same icons and forget those others that do not march the corporate profile. The women that carry the world on their shoulder's in hardship? The ones that wake up {some as early as 3am} to get to work so that some of the high profile women that will be fortunate enough to even attend dinner gala's to give them awards for indeed being women of substance work for. Without those poor, little hands of the women that stay the day looking after their homes, the high calibre women would not be able to carry out their work without worrying about their little fine loved one's be it in day care or at home. Much as the high flying women are celebrated in this month, the focus is also on Domestic Violence and abuse, that takes place against the woman. Are women making the right choices or is the pressure to succeed causing an escalating high rate of violence against women. As we celebrate women we should look on the overall if we are succeeding in educating the girl child- eradicating poverty and making the life of the woman safer. More emphasis needs to be made about the basic needs of the woman to curb human trafficking- educating the girl child goes beyond the classroom- but as an instrumental child who will one day be called a woman and help shape the future of another being her children or children from her neighbourhood. Women need to take pride in their previously sterior types of careers such as being educators, working in the medical industry and most of all home makers. Today it is not difficult for a stay home mother to also engage in small easy to run business even online to help maintain the cash flow. Of course the culture in which a girl child is born will also to some extent limit the goals the girl child will pursue- but at the end of the day- the woman needs to be more determined than ever to work towards excellence in every sphere of life which begins with an own inward look into one personally and not by another.

Promoting writing to excellence

As a published author, I pride in the profession, that like most arts have helped to preserve history. On thing I lament though is that African's have in the previous past not been cardinal at writing their own history. Most history books I read when I was in school must have been authored by our counter natives of Europe, who had mastered the art of writing and made education a bench mark to civilization. Although Africa has about 54 states on it's continent, some states have obviously been more advanced in participating in preserving their own history; Egypt for instance has been ahead of most African states in that regard, whilst in the South most history as in the eastern parts of the world was preserved in drawings or carvings found in the caves. Although I dislike categorizing the human race into regions it is imperative to state that another notable place the resonates with history is Timbuktu or Timbuctoo which is the capital of the Timbuktu region of Mali. 'In its Golden Age, the town's numerous Islamic scholars and extensive trading network made possible an important book trade: together with the campuses of the Sankore Madrasah, an Islamic university, this established Timbuktu as a scholarly centre in Africa.' Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. So how do we as an African continent embrace and promote African writers to excellence? That is the question that I am posing to you. There are indeed different genre of writers from Scholar, to fiction and children's books. With the rich population in Africa, we should be one of the richest continents as far as this industry is concerned, since we could boost a wider readership. Therefore since our African writers continue to struggle to sell the literature that is produced one from a glance has to come up with the root causes to our problem. For instance, in South Africa is an author sells three thousand books then they have done well!! on average. Obviously more needs to be done, there is not enough hype about reading our own books or even reading- the bridge to civilization is education, and education to be attained one has to read- our levels of illiteracy still remains very high. Although this may not be the root cause of our failure -if I may put it that way- to create the best sellers- we as a continent are not doing enough to create unconventional avenues of employment. If we look at it that way, although writing is an art and a skill, it crates a lot of wealth in the process. We have the author- the publishers- the printing companies- the designers-editors-the distributors and the book stores. Whilst we continue to stumble in poverty, we need to embrace writers and help them help create jobs. So the next time you feel like reading a book why not promote African writing excellence. Let us celebrate and enjoy the culture of reading and in fact thank you for reading this article which is just the tip of the ice-burg our next blog will be about competing on the international market. Africa Independent Magazine is an Africa founded company based in South Africa whose catch phrase is 'changing the mindset.'