Publishers’ association of south africa

These are the fundamental questions the Report will seek to answer.
However, the state of copyright in South Africa is not only a matter of legislation and effective enforcement. This Report argues that the social, economic and cultural milieu in which the copyright industries operate is of vital importance. The existence of an effective copyright environment, leading to healthy growth in the cultural industries is reliant upon a context in which intellectual and creative products are valued.
It needs to be understood, however, that the legislative context is only one facet of the intellectual property regime in the country and this report will need to cast its net wider, to look at the cultural, social and developmental context in which IPRs operate in the country. Stakeholders in the print industry sector in South Africa feel that there is an urgent need for education and awareness campaigns on copyright in South Africa.

Copyright in the Social Context

The development of local writing and knowledge production in a society depends to a large extent on a cultural and educational context that includes literacy levels, reading development and the value placed by society on intellectual products and intellectual property. South Africa’s apartheid history has served to retard both literacy and appreciation of the value of reading, for the apartheid education system placed the emphasis on the acquisition of paper qualifications at the expense of learning. Moreover, books and reading became damagingly associated with the Bantu Education textbooks supplied to schools, often the only books to which many children ever had access.

It is commonly understood that only 5% of South Africa’s population buys books with any regularity. The situation is aggravated by serious problems in the provision of library services, which should provide access to reading materials for poorer readers and should be a core contributor to the growth of a reading culture.
The low levels of reading also mean, of course, that there is considerable growth potential for print products in the South African market. The central problem identified by the PICC is that print products are not reaching the majority of the population, and the core strategic goal of the industry cluster is to expand access to and use of print products in South Africa to a much wider sector of the population.¹⁶