A library is one of the last free things left in your city, & the Cape Town Government wants to sell it?! 📚

Mbali Ntuli joins Zoe to make the case for why libraries still matter, maybe more now than ever. We pulled this convo out the archives, because with local government elections coming, it matters more than ever.

The City has proposed selling the land under the Camps Bay Library, valued at R63.45 million, to "unlock private sector development." We're calling it what it is: selling off one of the last free public spaces we've got.

And it's not just Camps Bay. Durban permanently shut its Musgrave Library but found R22m for statues. Joburg's got libraries closed and half-demolished. This is national, and it's happening in a country where 43% of households have no books at home and most of our kids still can't read for meaning. Libraries are one of the few places actively doing something about that. You don't sell that. You protect it.

So we pulled this convo with Mbali Ntuli (Groundwork Collective) out the archives, because with local government elections coming, it matters more than ever. 

Here's what you as a citizen, can actually do:

→ Find out who your ward councillor is (by law, they have to be reachable)

→ Rock up to council meetings, it's the people's house, and you're the people

→ Get a library card. Libraries are resourced by how many people use them, so a busy library is a much harder library to sell.

A strong democracy isn't strong because politicians decide to be good. It's strong because we know how to hold them to it.