20 February 2012
BLAZING A TRAIL IN LITERARY TOURISM
Lindy Stiebel, Professor of English Studies on the Howard College campus, has been instrumental in bringing Literary Tourism alive in KwaZulu-Natal!
Over the past 10 years, she has pioneered and led a unique project titled: “KZN Literary Tourism”, which has opened up a treasure trove for the literary fan or researcher.
A relatively new field in South Africa, Literary Tourism brings together two seemingly disparate disciplines – literature and tourism – to create a niche area which links writers, places and their works. It includes following the route a fictional character charts in a novel, visiting particular settings from a story or tracking down places linked to a writer, such as a birthplace, home or burial site. Literary tourists are specifically interested in how places have influenced writing and at the same time, how writing has created place.
Stiebel explains that while in other areas of the world such as England, ‘the interested reader/traveller can buy books on Hardy’s Wessex, Dickens’s London and Shakespeare’s Stratford-on-Avon, and even go on guided walks through famous ‘literary places like Wordsworth’s Lake District; there is very little of the same for the South African literature researcher – or indeed literary enthusiast.’
Culturally, KwaZulu-Natal is a rich province that has produced and is home to a wide variety of writers and diverse writing styles. Alan Paton, Roy Campbell, Lewis Nkosi, Lauretta Ngcobo and Daphne Rooke are but a few of the English and Zulu writers with KwaZulu-Natal origins. According to Stiebel, avid readers of South African literature may want to ‘follow the Alan Paton route in Ixopo, see where Bessie Head was born in Pietermaritzburg, go to Snake Park Beach where Lewis Nkosi set Mating Birds, or walk down Grey Street in Durban where Aziz Hassim’s novel, The Lotus People, is set.’
In 2002, KZN Literary Tourism started as a five-year research project funded by the National Research Foundation. Stiebel was convinced that this project could encourage an interest in the region, for visitors and locals, and offer more than the traditional tourist draw-cards of ‘sun, sea, Zulu dancing and game reserves.’
The project supported students through bursaries, developed an electronic literary map of KZN hosted on the provincial tourism authority’s website, hosted workshops, and developed literary trails as a way of linking writers and place and their readers as tourists. The project has continued through partnerships with local municipalities and is currently supported by grants from the National Arts Council.
Seven writers’ trails have been developed since the project’s inception. One, the Grey Street Writers Trail, is located in the inner-city of Durban while two others, the Cato Manor and INK (Inanda, Ntuzuma, KwaMashu) Writers Trails, have been based in townships surrounding the city. Community buy-in was needed to ensure that these trails were successful and an important aspect of this was training community members as local guides who could accompany a tour and provide inside information on the area.
‘KZN Literary Tourism is committed to responsible tourism and includes a community guides training component in all our projects. Selected community members are trained as local guides and then work with accredited guides taking tours,’ said Stiebel.
A new initiative will see KZN Literary Tourism partnering with the iLembe District Municipality for the development of the North Coast Writers Trail. ‘We will be working with the Municipality to train community guides on aspects of the literary heritage of KwaZulu-Natal and more specifically, on the authors chosen for the trail,’ explained Stiebel. Assisting her is a UKZN Masters student and a student from the Durban University of Technology who completed the community guide training offered by KZN Literary Tourism in 2009.
So what does it take to become a literary tourist? ‘Little more than your favourite novel and a quest for adventure,’ said Stiebel. ‘Besides, there are now literary guides, literary maps and literary tours in KwaZulu-Natal to help you on your way.’
Stiebel is hopeful the KZN Literary Tourism initiative will pave the way for similar literary tourism projects in other provinces of the country. She believes it can only have positive spin-offs for the ‘cultural preservation and promotion’ of a region.
Contact: Lindy Stiebel: 031 260 2308
Issued by:
Nomonde Mbadi
Executive Director: Corporate Relations Division