Origins Publishers started in 2015 out of a personal need for Mosa Mkhize. “I was pregnant at the time and looking for materials and tools to teach my child. The tools were to help me and my husband ensure our children keep up with their home language.”
Mkhize is fluent in six languages and wanted to find material that would equip them as a family and celebrate their own languages and for their children to be fluent in them.
“I also really wanted them to have a love for reading. I dreamt of books where my children would see themselves in the books going on crazy adventures and sailing the highest seas in a beautiful format. The reality of it is that those books do not exist.”
Mkhize quotes one of her favourite authors, Chimamanda Adichie on the dangers of a single story.
“With Origins I was looking for a different story and narrative to the usual ‘Bongani goes to Gogo’s house’. There is a place for that story but I wanted to see a story for Zenande (my daughter) going to New York and winning awards and doing amazing things which is something I did not find in books. That’s when I decided to start this project.”
Mkhize, who is a public policy advisor, began drawing her own sketches for illustrations and was encouraged by friends and family to carry on as they too were looking for similar content.
“That’s how it was born. Having the materials to teach multilingualism and to celebrate our identity but also for my children to see themselves in those materials. It has been an important space to have my children see themselves in a different story to what traditional media perpetuates what black children are like.”
While the company started in 2015, it was only last year that Mkhize was able to raise enough money to print her books.
“I self publish and have received such a phenomenal response and I am in the process of exploring how to broaden our publishing capabilities and how we can publish other people’s stories.”
This weekend, Mkhize will be launching a career series puzzles set.
“It has diverse backgrounds but mainly black children in a variety of careers, as astronauts and software developers and the like. I am looking at ways in which I can explore the offering of Origins.”
When Mkhize first reached out to publishers, she was met with the response that it was too risky to publish in vernacular languages.
“My writing and publishing journey is self taught. People are hungry for books in our own languages. Publishers are just not printing our black stories in the way that it differentiates from the one dimensional story that is out there. I am hopeful that in the coming months we (as Origins) will explore our publishing capabilities to include other authors.”
The book series is in a bilingual format.
"That means you can find Farm Animals in, for example, a Zulu and English combination. The book is available in 10 South African languages and then due to demand on the continent we have expanded it to Swahili and French.”
Mkhize is in the process of publishing her next book after raising some funds for the expensive printing process.
While her books may be inspired from a perspective of children learning, they are not limited to them.
“All of us are at different stages of language acquisition. I may be fluent in six languages but I am a starter when it comes to isiNdebele. Our target market is 0-10 but it appeals to everyone given that we are all at different stages of learning languages.”
Mkhize has been looking for donors to support the work that she does.
“Taking pride in our indigenous languages is actually a national priority from a government standpoint but also internationally. Last year the UN declared 2019 as the year of indigenous languages.”
Mkhize said the government still has a long way to go to walk the talk of making funding available for printing of those types of books and educational material.
“I continue to be optimistic. I know that one day I will succeed. My prayer is that people will see Origins as the solution to the challenge that many of us across the country face which is not having the tools to educate children around multilingualism and celebrating who they are. We must normalise black stories.”