“After a rather thorough and thoughtful process of elimination regarding which town to choose – Hanover (Olive Schreiner once lived there), Cradock, Philippolis, Sutherland – Richmond took the prize as the first Book Town in the Karoo. It had all the required ingredients. After overcoming secondary racism from estate agents – David bitterly complains about Pam Golding in particular – he was able to buy a house in Richmond through Saag Visagie of Seeff Properties. This set him on a course of partnership with someone he calls a mad Canadian vet, Peter Baker, who had been buying several properties in the Karoo, and with whom he formed a lasting business partnership and friendship. It began with an anonymous phone call that went like this:
“I want to start a Book Town in Richmond. It will be the first in SA and the first on the African continent. Essentially, we have to create a town full of bookshops. These bookshops will in turn bring in tourists.” “Why, Richmond?” “Well, usually you choose a town in economic decline. The model of a town full of books acts as a driver of regeneration.” “Wow. That’s a whale of an idea. Let’s do it!”
After roping in John Donaldson, who himself had just bought a few properties in Richmond with the plan of turning one of them into a bookshop, they were on their way to Book Town stardom. Between the three of them, they at least had three guaranteed bookshops for the small town as a seed for the Book Town. The rest, as they say, is history. But all history has its own ups and downs, including jealousy feuds with people who wanted to elbow David out once the concept caught on. These are not exaggerated fears by David, because, when in later years he managed to pull off the concept of the Olive Schreiner Book Festival in Cradock, he was eventually elbowed out, something he bitterly laments also in this book.”
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Mphuthumi Ntabeni is a South African author living in Cape Town. His debut novel The Broken River Tent won the University of Johannesburg Debut Novel Prize in 2019. He worked with the drama department of Rhodes University on two plays he wrote for the South African National Arts Festival about Maqoma and his half-brother Sandile, both of whom had been Xhosa chiefs. He has a passionate interest in South Africa’s frontier history and the wars of land dispossession. His most recent novel The Wanderers was published in 2021.
