HE first whiff that there could be prob- lems came days before the opening of the book fair. It even preceded the usual joining events to the fair: workshops, confer- ences, the most antici- pated being the indaba (Shona language term for 'in gathering'). Trish Mbanga, Executive Director of ZIBF had just negoti- ated her sports combi car out from the expansive gates of the Zimba- bwe Broadcasting Corporation that chilly Wednesday morning where the writer had been a guest on AM Zimbabwe, ZBC's live breakfast telecast when she asked, 'Have you seen the Herald this morning?' 'No1, I replied, but actually should have said, 'couldn't have1, since the journey to that edge of Harare's suburbia started so early my eyes had scarcely opened from sleep. 'There's a reportthatgov- ernment has barred the galzs from the fair!' I learnt also that it was a carry-over from the previous year when the first version of govern- ment edict forbidding the Book Fair Trust from allocating stands at the fair to the association of Gays and Lesbians was drafted, rousing much dust in its wake. And true enough, it did not take long, later that morning, as I walked the foyers of the central business district, for my eyes to catch the offending Herald report, layed out on the street1 s culverts. The screaming head- line said and sealed it all: Galzs had been banned from the fair, newspaper pages the days following awash with threats of open disruptions at the book fair's ceremonies from the galz community on the and government's promise to meet force with force if it was dared on the other. hand, one African Quurter/y an the Arts Vol. II NO i The executive director's squint into the misty morning betrayed not a mere hint of worry but a foreboding that I saw, threatened a shadowy cloud over all the effort, the plans and expectations for a most successful outing of the ZIBF in all its six years of evolution. The bustle of prepara- tions was felt all through the city; we sped past posters advertising the event, strapped to the girth of trees with twines. Talks among townsfolk in shops and pubs also easily veered off to the fair, often revealing each discussant's private plan towards the fair: the common refrain became, 'see you at the fair'. Which began to enlighten the complete visitor about this manner of cultural landscape: traditional lines of demarcation between the elite and regular townsfolk existing elsewhere blurred, especially as it concerned this interna- tional event — what only waited to be verified was whether public interest was aroused because of its obvi- ous implications for the na- tional pride or it was the sheer interest in books and culture which the book propagated. The eventual teeming crowds at the fair seemed to settle all that: even children scampered from stall to stall on their own leafing through promotional manuals from publishers and occasionally making modest purchases. Part of the bustle occured at the actual site of the event, in the new stone-walled and thatch-topped structure built into the precincts of the Harare Sculpture Park to join three scores of less permanent fair pavilions, but more appropri- ately, expansive thatch huts which did not just feature in the past years but have gone so far as to grant the ZIBF its very ornate, exotic character, at legst from the point of view of the non-African spectator. The structure is the new secre- tariat of the book fair admin- istration. Construction work and wood-panel finishings were only being completed the week previous and move- ments of man and goods into it were at its height. Trish trans- formed into her spritely bus- tling self the moment our exchanges turned to that sub- ject. And for good reason too, for she was proud to reveal to me that she was the very unlicensed architect of Zimbabwe! She had thought up and worked the house into shape with the assistance of local craftsmen and artisans. 'I drove the town plan ning people mad be lieve me....' she started to say. 'They demanded that I produce a copy of the plan but couldn't believe I had no plan at all!1 By this time, we had arrived in the park and begun to shuffle between the yet empty stalls and pavilions as we made our entry towards the new building. I would be a proud art- ist myself, in her shoes, I thought, as we contemplated the secretariat; it seemed quite a natural conclusion for me therefore to have her photo- graphed against a backdrop of the thatched house! Butthe local thatch mak- ers found employment in other places around the city—their craft was to be encountered in exclusive cottages and re- sort centres for tourists. Hotels of introduced decors African Quarterly on the Arts Vol.1/ NO 4 thatchwork into bars and res- taurants, which I adjudged in- congruous in some cases, amidst enormous concrete bulwarks. Some were outright exaggerations designed to satiate the conceptions of Eu- ropean tourists about Africa. Walls displayed assortments of hides from tigers and ze- bras along with multitudes of hunters' staves and knives. Not untypically, Harare's 'African' eateries kept reserves of 'na- tive' dancers and stunt-makers who emerged in-between meals to render performances which were overtly menda- cious - they were more exotic to their African audiences than to guests from elsewhere. Which is not to say that they did not fulfill their functions, for the restaurateurs made brisk sales on food items which atimes included wierd if delec- table menus of tongues of snakes and crocodiles' flesh! The pattern of Zimba- bwean thatch however shares much similarity with West Afri- can thatch: the same roof slope and arch shape, almost ro- tund, except that the former consisted of thicker and firmer material and so were more permanent and a lot more aesthetically pleasing. Whereas thatchtops, which are still a ubiquitous feature in sahelian Northern Nigeria, and in fact all of sahelian West Africa, have shorter livespans and in most cases have to be replaced every two years, due also perhaps to the fact that West African rains can be more stormy, capable of beating roofs to shreds from severe drops. And as with tra- ditional modes of building, so with the music and textiles. Xylophone orchestras parad- ing large numbers of instru- mentalists graced the fair open- ing ceremonies and the exhi- bitions, some comprising of solely women instrumentalists. The instrument was the same as those known to other parts of the continent except that I thought the Zimbabwean or- chestral sound was more ex- quisite and their singers more sonorous. Much as the same observation of close similar- ity may be made of the local textile prints, known in Nige- ria as 'ankara', they were, in the words of a chance ac- quaintance, junior cousins of West African prints, boasting of much less splash of colour and flamboyance. 'West Africa is the mother of Africa....' I heard him say. We have no sculpture, I mean real sculpture, the great African crafts that be- long to West Africa. We don't have the paintings either, only music. Culturally West Africa is the mother of Africa.' Notwithstanding, the book fair from the first day made a good show of the region's rich cultural re- sources, sifting, selecting, ex- hibiting the very best with good taste. For in addition to flooding the fair grounds with hordes of musical and dance troupes which included a mar- velous children's dance group, it also ensured that the festival's main souvenir, the book fair's folder, was wholly encased with the lo- cal coloured textile prints. Even so did associations of printers and graphic artists feature prominently at the pavilions side by side book binders and pre-press com- panies (all unquestionable allies of the book traders). The actual book fair, that is, outside the usual con- ferences, workshops and seminars of writers, publish- ers and book councils, con- sisted of two parts, the traders' days and the public days. And the term 'trader' included li- brarians and representatives of public institutions who ar- rived to represent the book interests of their organisations with selective eyes. Even so, it was intended primarily to help publishers interract, collabo- rate and compare notes be- fore the public was allowed to swamp the site. The objective of most publishers, especially the non-Southern Africans, was more to exhibit than to sell, and it was not difficult to see why. First, Zimbabwe had stringent tax policies on im- portation that extended to books, which many first-timers found to be strange. It seemed such a contradition that Africa's most famous book promoter should also be the one to impose duties on books. A manager at the fair's perma- nent bookshop assured me that the book fair has had to pay duties on imported promo- tional manuals. And so, it turned out not to be an extraor- dinary affair for the copies of Glendora Review making their first entry into Zimbabwe to be detained by Zimbabwean cus- toms! That is, until the book fair's official intervention. Pub- lishers who knew about the situation from past experience had the good sense to arrive with a few sample copies of their publications 'for exhibi- tion only' and so, were hardly able to honour the usual legiti- mate demands for gratis cop- ies. Which may have been why the man who to me was ZIBF's most enthusiastic exhibi- tor in '96, Chief Joop Berkout of Nigeria, slapped the backs of a few friends who visited his stand during the trader's days and said his main task in Harare was to sell foreign Above: Trish Mbanga Below: Hans M. Zell rights on his books. And if it was a job im- porting books to Zimbabwe, it was a harder job repatriating funds from it, according to a Namibian participant. Such that, even when sales were recorded, the proceeds were more wisely lavished-on per- sonal acquisitions from Harare's shops which fortu- nately were very well stocked.. The greatest benefit to African publishers in my observation was the fact that they were able to interract, particularly on book production. Since the economic decline of the Sev- enties and Eighties in many African countries and the wide- spread embrace of structural adjustment programmes which placed premium on local pro- duction, foreign importation of goods diminished in quan- tity (including books authored by African nationals) and ac- companied by the massive de- valuation of the national cur- rencies, where such goods were available they shot astro- nomically above the purchas- ing capabilities of the people. African publishers have had to print locally with less sophis- ticated equipment and less competent manpower, the re- sult being the drastic ebb in the quality of African publish- ing products. So that the chal- lenge before African publish- African Quarterly on the Arts Vol.1/ NO 4 ers in the Nineties has been to achieve high-quality local book production aspiring to inter- national standards with cheaper materials and not-so- sophisticated equipment. A brief tour round the stalls at the fair confirms that African pub- lishers are facing up to the task with different degrees of suc- cess. An international fair helps publishers to spy on whole collections by counterparts from other nations and hope- fully to compare notes on op- erational strategies. Some West and East African pub- lishers may be overheard ex- claiming about the high pro- duction standards of some titles given the same or even con- fronted by worse, economic and infrastructural problems. For Southern African states, the trend now is to go South, to the big neighbour, the Repub- lic of South Africa, where print- ing is reportedly cheaper, man- power more efficient and the latest, state-of-the-art equip- ment more abundant. In Harare at least, local competi- tors are also responding, ris- ing to the occasion to stem the tides of migrations to the South by providing comparable ser- vices through harder work and more enhanced creativity. World Capital And Harare, without any doubt, became the capi- tal of the world. If for the only reason that for that one month at least the whole world con- verged at her doorstep. ZIBF became, to adapt a line from Nigerian poetOdia Ofeimun, the huge carcase in the mar- ketplace pulling giant vultures to itself. The list would be end- less. But certainly the town of Oxford in the UK emptied it- self completely of all its pub- lishers and editors. The more memorable including the en- ergetic veteran, Hans Zell, moving spirit behind the once famous but now deceased Ife Book Fair, Mary Jay of the African Books Collective (ABC), Katherine Salahi in- charge of Bellagio administra- tion in Oxford (wife of re- nowned artist Ibrahim El Salahi) accompanied by niece, Becky Fishman, an Oxford linguistics graduate and intending Oxford editor- publisher. Then of course Natalie Warren-Green, over- seas publisher of Heinemann Group and Terence Cross, Heinemann publishing consult- ant for Africa complimented by a whole contingent of the Heinemanns. London officials he greatest benefit to Afri- can publishers in my obser- vation was the fact that they were able to interract, parti-c u Luly on book production. like Margaret Ling, managing director of ZIBF UK, Carol Priestley of the Southern Afri- can Book Development and Education Trust and Paul Westlake, Hon. Treasurer, In- ternational African Institute all seemed to me to be operat- ing more from the wings, but were indeed active arranging for the diverse consortia and workshops that ran in part prior to the fair, some right into the fair. Priestley for ex- ample is also responsible for coordinating the African Peri- odicals Exhibit (APEX) which promotes African serial publi- cations and journals world- African Quarterly OH the Arts Vol. 11 Nil 4 wide.- From the innumerable horde of others were Verlag Holger Ehling a long lost' friend, editor of Frankfurt- based African literature jour- nal, Mdtatu and press officer with the Frankfurt book fair; Peter Ripken, Secretary-Gen- eral of the society for the pro- motion of African, Asian and Latin American literatures dou- bling as representative of the Henrich Boll Foundation; Tade Akin Aina of CODESRIA, Dakar, Senegal; Atukwei Okai the Ghanaian poet and Woeli Dekutsey a ZIBF trustee. At a seperate event holding in the town, a Commonwealth diplo- matic briefing, the world also compassed me about, after I had been securely roped in by my illustrious 'agent' in Harare, the indefatigable Chief Joop Berkout. Fortunately some of the presences would be recogniseable too: Emeka Anyaoku of Nigerian origins and Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Tayo Fasoyin formerly University of Lagos professor of international rela- tions currently serving as Inter- national Labour Organisation's representative in Zimbabwe. It was the indaba how- ever that contained the great- est horde of dignitaries where Nigerian writer, KoleOmotoso delivered a keynote address around the 'National book policy, the literate environment and its relationship to national development.' It was not un- common to start a spirited con- versation with a new acquain- tance only to discover in the end that he was some cabinet minister in Sierra Leone or Zim- babwe. What was more, it was here that my 'agent' de- manded that I lodge a com- plaint about the momentary detention of the GR copies at Harare Airport with the very person of the Zimbabwean minister of education! African Journal Editors One of the lofty ideas that typified the sixth ZIBF was the African journal editors' workshop, hatched by the In- ternational African Institute (IAI). Looking back now, I can testify that the five-day meet- ing achieved more than its organisers originally intended, which was to enhance what was described as 'good prac- tise in journal publishing.1 Even so, Hans Zell, the coordinator of the workshop would in the course of the conference offer a more explicit term for the motivating idea, which was, 'good housekeeping in jour- nal publishing.' Obviously the workshop sprang out of a be- lief that journals have failed most times in Africa not for want of good editorial imput but more for poor manage- ment - subscription manage- ment more directly but also, poor marketing and promo- tions and inefficient finance and business plan. Hans Zell had prior to the workshop prepared a com- prehensive handbook on the subject, commissioned by the IAI, with which participants were served in loose leaf format before their arrival in Harare, so that they would have been thoroughly ac- quainted with the material. This then became the working script on which discussions were builtand practical experiences of participating editors com- pared with those described in the book The Harare workshop was to be the second, immedi- ately succeeding a similar workshop for editors and pub- lishers of scientific journals in Eastern Africa held in Addis Ababa. Harare than concen- trated on editors and publish- ers of social science and cul- tural and literary journals in Southern Africa. But not with- out one exception at least. And that is a cultural-literary journal based in Western Af- rica represented by the present writer. One of the many marks of the recognition of the value of the gathering was the in- volvement of some editors who though were not officially in- vited, came along all the same as observers, word about the meeting having leaked out to them. They include Micheal Cross, editor of the University of Witwatersrand publication, Perspectives in Education (South Africa) and Elizabeth Larson who coordinates Con- sortium for African Scholarly Publishing, Nairobi, Kenya, among others from Tanzania and Zambia. The workshop exposed the editors to common journal killers which are often very dangerous for the very reason that they are prone to being taken for granted. Even minus- cule factors like the way the name of a journal reads on the cover, the publication's size and format also, (in addition to consistency of format) which many were surprised to learn help librarians to determine what publications to select for subscription. The booby-traps in the roadways to a success- ful publication of journals (es- pecially in Africa) were so varied and could never have come naturally to anyone with- out the practical, long-stand- ing experience of the coordi- nator, Hans Zell and his hu- morous compliment, Roger Stringer who besides being workshop co-instructor, also contributes a chapter in the Harare high street handbook oh 'Desktop Pub- lishing for Beginners'. Stringer would also, towards the end, give a demonstration on the internet, which was an exten- sion of a workshop session that addressed 'electronic document delivery and elec- tronic publishing - implications and repercussions for African journal publishers.' The programme was as all-encompassing as it was vigorous, leading most editors convinced that it should have extended over several more days. The needle-eye hand- book detail pierced such other vital subjects as, a publishing viability checklist, editorial and style, production (we later had an outdoor session in a pre- press company midtown), in- dexing and abstracting ser- vices and possibilities for non- subscription revenue. It was amazing how much Hans and Roger were prepared to give away considering that they - Hans in particular - are them- selves practitioners in the same field yet doling out so freely what we thought were hard- earned, essential trade secrets. Beyond the immediate gain of injecting life-support insight into the operations of journal publishing was the gain of gathering the editors in one venue and thus making them instant close acquaintances and hopeful future collabora- tors. They include L. O. Aina, editor African Journal of Li- brary, Archives and Informa- tion Science, Gaborone, Botswana; Janet Nyeko of Review of Southern African Studies, Lesotho; Steve Chimombo of Wasi, Malawi; Maila Nghidinwa, Sister Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia; Walter Chaleka, Staffrider, Pretoria, South Af- rica; Kwame Ninsin, African Journal of Political Science, Harare; Lesley Humphrey, African Publishing Review, Harare; Sioux Cumming, Ge- ographyjournal of Zimbabwe, Harare; Ropafadzo Benjamin, Journal of Social Development in Africa, Harare; Caroline Boswell, Legal Forum, Harare; Godfrey Moyo, Township The- atre News, Bulawayo; Sam Matsangaise, Zambezia, Harare and Carol Pearce of The Zimbawean Review, Harare. One of the testimo- nies to which was a down- town Harare exploration with Carol Pearce and Godfrey Moyo (Carol's brilliant idea) to MBARI, a high-density Harare suburb, days after the workshops and book fair had dispersed, a tour which con- cluded with a rice-filled stop- over in one of Harare's non- touristic restaurants! York Road, Greendale The fair wound up on a most enthusiastic note, despite the initial galz problem. I had paused somewhere to wonder if it was not a conundrum afterall, carefully scripted, I imagined, behind one of the desks in the multiplied high- rise government ministry build- ings in the city. Or maybe it was the reporter reading too much in. But the affair cer- tainly served the event well in the end, both locally and abroad, bestowing it with a new topicality. How else could it be? The dramatis personae being the government and a local association. What ordi- narily would have been an African Quarterly on the Arts Vol. II NO 4 II internal, national affair was thus performed as a dramatic opening glee before a nor- mally fussless meeting of busi- ness and scholarly minded in- dividuals from around the world. I thought if the associa- tion had had no problems get- ting registered in Zimbabwe and as such was recognised as a legal entity, and that long before the fair, why was the government now choosing the lawns of the book fair gardens to lock shoulders with it, a venue where it knew they would be spied upon by the whole world? WE W I LL BE T H E RE So 0d v e r t i se n o w a nd S u b s c r i be to a r a p i d ly e x p a n d i ng i n t e r n a t i o n al o u t r e a c h. All subscribers should make cheques payable to GLEND0RA INTERNATIONAL P.O. Box 50914 Falomo, Lagos. Nigeria. INDIVIDUALS: North America - Europe Africa Nigeria $24.00 £20.00 $20.00 N1.200 $40.00 £36.00 $35.00 N1.500 INSTITUTIONS: North America - Europe Africa Nigeria An additional $7.00, £5.00 per issue/ ($28, £20 per yr.) should be added for Airmail, postage and handling. Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. Back issues of GLfNDORA REVIEW are available upon request. For more tnlormatlon on sub- scription and advertisement, contact GLENDORA REVIEW P.O. Box 50914, Falomo Lagos, Nigeria. Tel: LAGOS 2692762, 680089 Fax: LAGOS 2618083 e/mall: 105271,11 ©compuserve.com Other subtle wars were fought during the Zimfair how- ever but that did not receive the same amount of publicity. Even as the exhibitors closed shop towards the end, some could be seen scratching off certain little stickers expressing yet another form of protest mes- sage. They were to be found everywhere, their message di- rect and brief: DON'T TAX BOOKS. A campaign Ifigured was engineered by fellow-suf- ferers at the airport customs desk. For most participants the concluding hours were spent in drinks-saturated festivity. They dissolved into small groups and scattered all over: hotel lob- bies, Harare gardens and the book fair secretariat. For the Nigerian 'contingent' it meant a motor-ride down to the home of the Mettedens, the Nigerian High Commissioner and his wife, on invitation. There on York Road we were awaited by a robust dinner of sorely missed Nigerian delicacies, led by the chief guest himself, Joop Berkout. But not before 'fluidy' conversation sessions shared joyously bythe zestful host and hostess with the diners - Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike the novelist and prominent indaba figure, publishers Lawal Solarin (Literamed, Lagos), Berkout (Spectrum, Ibadan) and Victor Nwankwo (New Dimension, Enugu). Thecompanyalso con- sisted of Lagos University bookshop manageress Mrs. Orimolade and daughter, two Nigerian lecturers at the Uni- versity of Zimbabwe, Tayo Fasoyin of the ILO and a Nige- rian diplomatic staff. Even there out in Greendale, we heard echoes from the Atlanta Olym- pics. It was expctly an hour to the historic last-leg soccer en- counter between Nigeria and Argentina. GR