Dibs

You can tell by its book fair that Zimbabwe is majorly screwed-up. “Once Africa’s proudest annual literary celebration,” Zimbabwe’s Inernational Book Fair “now has only one tale to tell — the decline of a country brought to its knees by political and economic woes,” reports Qatar’s Gulf Times. Until 2002, the fair “was one of the continent’s biggest shows, attracting African, European, American and Asian publishers to exhibit their work, and Africa’s top writers.” But the fair held in Harare this week “remains ‘international’ in name only, shunned by foreign publishers and writers who see little mileage from travelling to a country the US has branded an ‘outpost of tyranny.’” (That’s because it is an outpost of tyranny.) The Gulf Times goes on: “During Zimbabwe’s sunnier days, when [dictator Robert] Mugabe was still hailed as the man who ended white rule in the former Rhodesia in 1980, the Harare book fair drew Africa’s literary giants.” Past headliners included Nigeria’s legendary Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart. “‘It was Afro-centric … people came for brainstorming sessions on African literature…. It was extremely fun…,’ said Veronique Tadjo, an author from Ivory Coast. But now the big writers and publishers are staying away and the fair resembles a small village show, its largely empty book stalls standing under thatch shades in a vacant, windswept park. Although Zimbabwe has a 90% literacy rate – one of the highest in Africa – its economic woes have left it almost unable to sustain a publishing industry as consumers struggle with inflation now well over 1,000%.” The article goes on to say that the country can’t afford to pay top musicians to perform there, and that citizens can’t afford to rent DVDs or go to movie theaters, evincing an almost complete collapse in culture. That’s the trouble with dictators. During China’s cultural revolution, most books were outlawed, as were all love songs.