When Doors Close

“A bookstore is a place of commerce; a library is a place of citizenship”
When Doors Close: A formerly homeless man reflects on the closing of libraries.
Kagiso Phihlela
There used to be a time when I measured my days not by a clock, but by opening hours.
Nine o’clock meant warmth. It meant a chair by the window, the quiet hum of computers, the soft turning of pages. Libraries were the only place where I could exist without explanation.
But from my history—as a man who once lived on the streets with nothing but the clothes on his back—I see the library as something far more sacred than a collection of stories.
I am profoundly glad to be where I am today. I am grateful for a roof over my head and a business that allows me to curate worlds for my neighbours. I am proud to sell books that challenge and inspire. But my heart is heavy with a specific kind of sadness when I hear the argument that “everyone has an iPad” or ” everything is online these days” or “people don’t read any more.”
As a bookseller, I love nothing more than a novel finding a forever home with an excited customer. But a bookstore is a place of commerce; a library is a place of citizenship. And that is priceless.
This has left me with contrasting views. As a bookseller, I see the joy of ownership, but I also see the barrier of a price tag. From a Formerly Homeless Man’s perspective, I remember when R20 for a hardcover was the difference between eating or going hungry.
When I was homeless, the library gave me more than books. It gave me time. Time to sit, to think, to remember I was still human. Out there on the streets, you become invisible or unwelcome. Sometimes both. But in the library, I was just another person.
I used my time in the library consistently well. I studied. For years I studied. I am lucky. I was able to break the cycle. I qualified which eventually opened doors. Now I am employed as an intern teacher’s assistant in a prestigious high school and I no longer live in a street shelter I now am able to rent a room in the suburbs. I am living proof that a library card is a ladder. I used those computers, books and newspapers to find resources that eventually led me to this life. For me, the library was a portal to another world. It supported me and allowed me to believe another path was possible….
The mantra among us St Lit vendors, is “Books and Care can change the world” a phrase we earnestly all live by.
People talk about budgets, about “shifting priorities”, about digital access. I hear the words, but they don’t resonate in the same way for me, because for someone like I used to be; someone without a home, without a device or even a place to charge one; there is no such thing as “digital access”. There is only a door and whether or not it opens.
Please keep the doors of our libraries open.
• Kagiso Phihlela is proudly an intern teaching assistant and chess coach at a Durban school. He was formerly homeless and was a vendor with the Denis Hurley Centre Street Lit book selling entrepreneurship programme, where he still works part time.
• This week, 16 – 22 March, is South African Library Week. Ironically, it is also exactly one year since the lease for Musgrave Library in Glenwood Village came to an end. Musgrave Library closed its doors last August due to eThekwini Municipality’s inertia and inability to pay outstanding debts and renew their lease. The library doors remain closed, and no solution is in sight.