How to tell a bedtime story in South Africa
Refiloe Moahloli has mastered the art
Simon Allison in Johannesburg
RSVPs for the Daring Dragons Book Evening (“Come dressed as your favourite dragon!”) at Roosevelt Park PrePrimary School, in one of Johannesburg’s leafier northern suburbs, were trickling in at about the usual rate. Then the school revealed the identity of the guest reader. Suddenly, it could barely keep up with demand.
If you are a child under eight in South Africa, or the parent of a child under eight in South Africa, then Refiloe Moahloli is something of a rock star. She is the author of a series of beloved children’s books that have captured the imaginations of kids across the country, including How Many Ways Can You Say Hello, We Are One and, most recently, A Friend For All Seasons.
Like all the best children’s authors, she tells fantastical stories while conveying universal truths about friendship, love and happiness. Happiness is something that Moahloli brings refreshing complexity to, in A Friend For All Seasons. A character, Gugu, figures out that she can be both happy and sad at the same time – and that this is perfectly normal.
Moahloli’s books are rooted in a vision of South Africa that feels at once familiar has mastered the art. and aspirational. Jacarandas bloom in spring, boys play cricket with tin cans and characters speak multiple languages. Her politics are not far from the surface, which is perhaps part of the appeal. In How Many Ways Can You Say Hello, the protagonist, a little white girl, is given homework: to learn how to greet in all of the country’s official languages. It is homework from which plenty of parents could benefit, too.
“At the very least we should be able to greet others in their mother tongue,” Moahloli tells The Continent at the Roosevelt Park reading this week, in between book signings.
Moahloli grew up around books, at her home and her school in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. She remembers being asked to read in front of her class in primary school, and falling in love then – not just with stories themselves, but with telling stories. She held on to this dream even as life pushed her in other directions: Moahloli studied IT, got a job with a mobile phone operator and worked in India for several years.
It was on her return, while watching a young niece struggle to stay in touch with isiXhosa, her home language, that she decided to write a book for children that reflected the reality of growing up in a multicultural, multilingual environment. The result was How Many Ways Can You Say Hello, published in 2017. It was an instant bestseller.
I had to study the art of writing, and read a lot of children’s books. I fell in love with the art of it, the beauty of it, the magic of it, and I’ve been blessed to have talented illustrators to work with,” Moahloli says. In return, a generation of children have fallen in love with her characters and their stories, which have been translated into Afrikaans, isiXhosa, isiZulu and Sesotho. “When they say mother tongue, it’s literal. There’s a visceral connection to that first language that your parents speak. When you can read in that language the connection is deeper, stronger, closer, it further helps to create that connection with reading and the joy that comes with it,” she says.