Hosea Tokwe | Movers & Shakers 2015 — Change Agents

Literacy Builder

Hosea Tokwe arrived at the Matenda School on July 6, 2007, carrying two boxes of books donated by a former student; he was determined to launch the poor rural school’s first library. It was a tumultuous time in Zimbabwe, however, and the community in Matenda greeted him with suspicion. They feared he was not actually a librarian at Midlands State University Library but an opposition political agent sent to stir up trouble.

Tokwe convinced them that setting up a library was his only goal, and for the next ten months he regularly made the difficult 100-kilometer trip from Gweru. “I had to walk 25 km from the main road and move in the bush by foot to deliver book donations,” he recalls.

He enlisted local stakeholders like the school development committee and Matenda’s chief and headmen. He hired local carpenters to build bookshelves. In April 2008, the Matenda school library opened, its collection bolstered by 18 boxes of books, most donated from abroad.
Since then, some 60 percent of boys now pass the annual school exams, and 40 percent of girls do. (Girls spend so much time at home fetching firewood and well water that they have limited study time, Tokwe says.) The Zimbabwean publisher Weaver Press continues to donate books to the school.

Tokwe has won multiple awards for this work. He’s also been a driving force behind the revival of the largely defunct Zimbabwe Library Association (ZIMLA), helping to organize ZIMLA’s first national conference in April 2010. Soon after he was elected treasurer of ZIMLA, a position he still holds.
“Mr. Tokwe…has made immense contributions to the profession, especially in the area of school library services,” says Harriet Ncube, national secretary general of ZIMLA. “He has inspired all of us.”

http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/03/people/movers-shakers-2015/hosea-tokwe-movers-shakers-2015-change-agents/ 

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