MEDIA HUB - Closes shop in Uganda and melts away quietly - and, it is not news item in Uganda

MEDIA HUB – Closes shop in Uganda and melts away quietly – and, it is not news item in Uganda

Sam Mwaka-karama

For most of the world’s elite; those with the money, a good comfortable home is endowed with a sizeable home library.

Seasonal book buying is a must-do in those homes. A home that is host to several author’s works is a knowledgeable home. Children who grow-up in such homes are a university degree guaranteed kids.

However, a phenomenon is developing itself in my country – Uganda. There are no elites to support a bookshop. Foreign book outlets like the Media Hub get eaten up by local book vendors and street peddlers… only in Uganda is this possible! Media Hub went under and melted away!

National book activities are centered on the textbook industry. These local publishers, target schools, colleges, tertiary institutions and lay organizations. There is a myth about dis-interest in novels, especially the outright foreign ones…

The new generation seems to be middle of the road about fiction. There is a new kind of writers who appeal to these young; ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ or books on ‘Power of….’ Or ‘How to blah blah blah’ and those host of religious books by various world famous Pastors and Preachers.

Those have placed the lid on internationally known book vending shops. Media Hub just closed its shop which was situated on the upper floor of the Oasis Mall in Kampala. That typically international characteristic of book vending can only survive as a locally founded and owned enterprise or family business. Below that level is the street pavement vendors [whose stock you will never see] because they are a huge prey for the City Council. Often you will notice (Book Seller) notice on a small placard with telephone number and, perhaps some silent guy fidgeting on his cell phone.

Those are the piranhas who ate-up the Media Hub! And all those old international bookshops…

They will sell you a title you wouldn’t expect them to have! They turn and churn the belly of the top notch elites because even their English is subterranean – they might or might not lead you to where their stock actually come from; mostly they might just place a call and shortly someone walks by with the title in hand. You pay and get lost! For some reason it is all so clandestine… like dealing in contraband!

The big international gallery bookshops folding-up here and there seem to think – that it is the advent of the eBook era and the Kindle reading tabs that is changing people’s reading habit. So that the print book is getting out of circulation.

Which to me leaves one question unanswered – what has it got to do with the elite home library of print books the prestige home stock? When the Chinese created the Plastic flowers, did it wipe-out natural flowers?

The reason the African elite are not buying books is more cynical and mean than that! It is called the DEATH of the African Reading Culture. That is why; when the Media Hub closed shop in Uganda, the issue was not news worthy in the country. **