It's SA Library week – so let’s close the libraries

Libraries are amazing spaces – a place where you can be safe without needing to spend any money – one of the few indoor public places where you can do so; where you can browse through novels; borrow reference books; use computers to work on school projects and academic research; update your CV or apply for work; read the newspapers; use the free wi-fi;  sit at workstations to study; or just quietly read, undisturbed. Libraries are truly democratic spaces where everyone comfortably co-habits over their shared love of knowledge.

This week, from March 16 to 22, is South African Library Week which this year looks at the theme: “Reclaiming Knowledge, Empowering Futures”, which according to the Library and Information Association of South Africa, means “to focus on preserving indigenous knowledge, strengthening digital inclusion, and fostering lifelong learning.”

Library Week also looks at advocacy: “Highlighting the need to protect libraries.”

How painfully ironic then, that during SA Library Week, one of the few remaining libraries serving greater Durban: Musgrave Library in Glenwood Village remains closed and has been since last August due to non-payment of rent and utilities. The community sincerely hopes that it might somehow still be saved; that leaders in City Hall would realise the tragedy of closing yet another library and find the funds to pay the outstanding debts and open the doors once more.  

Its lease expired on 15 March last year, exactly a year ago. For an entire year, City Hall has failed dismally to find a solution, access necessary funds to reopen in Glenwood Village, or find a viable alternative city space to move the books to and continue to operate.  

We hoped for a solution. We really did and perhaps continue to do so. But now, during the week when we should be celebrating our city libraries, instead we mourn them closing down.

Musgrave Library was great – airy and spacious with friendly, knowledgeable staff, I was a regular there. They had a huge children’s section typically full of little ones sitting at tiny tables paging through the impressive collection of children’s books. They also had huge dark wooden tables where people could sit and study, read or work undisturbed. The library was a happy mix of scholars, students, families and pensioners. I don’t know how many people came through the library on an average week – several hundred I suspect. 

Musgrave Library has gone the same way as the similarly spacious Queensmead Mall library in the heart of Umbilo – which is now empty with “To Let” signs on the doors.  Windermere Library has long gone too. 

What is now Umbilo Library is a tiny inaccessible building in Bulwer Park.  We are led to believe that tender complications meant it never opened as the intended coffee shop and so has ended up as an uncomfortable, cramped, awkward, badly-modified space. It has one worktable, two computers and five shelves of books – far smaller and less resourced than most nearby school libraries, it is hopelessly inadequate for the area it serves, and with no attempt to care for the garden, walkway or entrance.

The irony is that the suburbs where thriving libraries have closed, are the very suburbs which are becoming high density student hubs. Umbilo, Glenwood, Manor Gardens, Windermere and Berea are home to approximately 4000 students living in crowded, noisy residences. There are huge new student residence blocks still going up – multistorey buildings designed to house hundreds more students around the Berea campuses.  

Durban – South Africa’s only UNESCO City of Literature – on the one hand is celebrating students with all the affiliated rhetoric about nurturing great minds of the future, while on the other hand is needlessly closing down the very places essential for students to study – public libraries. 

Sure there are still probably close on 80 to 90 eThekwini municipal libraries in town and in the suburbs, but libraries with a high density of scholars, students and older citizens, are closing their doors. It defies all logic.

It seems as though libraries in private / rented property are permanently vulnerable and can be closed down due to inconsistent city funding. There is talk of the city considering a new building in Bulwer Park. Building a whole new structure in a precious city green lung is an ill-informed, impractical, absurd suggestion.  There are ample appropriate buildings in the catchment area which can be repurposed in the medium term. Big parts of Dokkies College of Education in Umbilo for example. Perhaps Stella Bowling Club could host the library and still retain some of its bowling activities; the old tennis court in Ferguson Road is well positioned – with club house and tennis courts providing sufficient space, and close to Bulwer Park, and the old Umbilo / Congella Sports Club would work too.  

But surely, in the short term, it would make sense for eThekwini Municipality to prioritise finding an urgent solution to keep Musgrave library open where it is. And quickly.  

It might be that this strategy reflects indifference on the part of the municipality or an obsession with cost-cutting – inconsistent when you consider that several libraries could be run for the cost of erecting two made-in-China statues for R22m. But there could be a more devious reason. After all libraries encourage enquiry and self-development and asking questions – all things that autocratic politicians hope to discourage so that voters will fall for their empty promises.  

• Illa Thompson is a resident of Glenwood. She runs the Denis Hurley Centre’s homeless book entrepreneurship project, Street Lit, and owns Publicity Matters, a Durban publicity company.