The politics of information: Libraries and librarianship in the Western Cape, South Africa, 1930s--1960s

This study of libraries, literacy, and literature in the Western Cape addresses questions about the production, consumption, and politics of knowledge in South Africa from the 1930s through the 1960s. It argues that a culture of reading, which existed among blacks in the Western Cape since the 1800s, was strengthened by the development of free public library services for all races. Funding from New York's Carnegie Corporation established libraries for blacks in the 1930s, thus allowing a reading culture to emerge and ensuring a transnational, American influence on South African library development. Local initiatives such as the Cape Libraries Extension Association expanded library services to blacks in the Western Cape in the 1940s. The stress and confusion of the early apartheid era caused a rise in escapist reading among blacks and whites in the 1950s. Amidst the increasing racial discrimination of the 1960s, blacks and whites in Cape Town resisted library segregation, defying apartheid legislation mandating separate libraries for all races. This project augments current knowledge of the historical reading practices of black South Africans, and posits libraries not only as important sites for the promotion of a culture of reading among black South Africans in the Western Cape, but also as centers contributing to the transformation of South African society.