Seth Paul Manaka Festschrift: A Visionary South African Librarian - Published by the National Library of South Africa and to be launched on Saturday, 15 August 2015, at the National Library of South Africa, Centre for the Book (62 Victoria Street, Cape Town).
The doors of information must be open to all. This constitutional principle, interrogated and re-inflected by the various authors in the Festschrift, provides the focus and keynote of each of the essays in this long-awaited book.
The political thrust the authors note in Manaka’s work as a librarian is continued here in an earnest exploration of an aspect of the history of human rights in South Africa, of the challenges and possibilities of freedom and justice as they are conceived by one of South Africa’s extraordinary and visionary librarians.
Throughout the Festschrift, the authors recall and restage the difficulties and the prospects in the struggle for the right of access to information as a human right in defence of which Seth Manaka remains resolute. At issue is the power derived from information and knowledge as a force for sovereignty, and the centrality of information and knowledge as instruments for fundamental change in power relations in South Africa and around the world.
This remarkable book, the first festschrift for a librarian in South Africa, offers a challenging and inspiring vision of that change which Seth Manaka claimed all his life, a vision not yet present in South Africa but whose public value is acknowledged and felt in various social movements.
Attached please find the programme featuring Hon. Nathi Mthethwa, Minister of the Department of Arts and Culture, Deputy Minister of the Department of Arts and Culture, Hon. Rejoice Mabudafhasi amongst others.
For more information and RSVP please contact:
Muponisi Nkuna
Cell: +27 (0)83 471 0061
E-mail: muponisi.nkuna@nlsa.ac.za
