Rose Francis: The belle of South African literature

Written by Denise Mhlanga
Monday, 22 August 2011 10:24

Africa’s jewels and treasures are often hidden in the most ordinary things. Its people, history and music continue to fascinate and encourage story telling through various media. Rose Francis, managing director of African Perspectives Publishing, loves the simplicity and authenticity that is found in Africa. Her company creates a platform for African literature and African writers with a perspective on African matters.

She publishes and distributes literature with a focus on history, knowledge and politics. “There is no greater subject than history in my opinion as it underpins every aspect of existence,” she says.  She carefully explains that the articulation of a people’s history – defined by a body of text where the critical points of knowledge include substantive findings that are either theoretical or methodological – is engaging and intellectual.

This, she says, enhances the narrative experience and excavates the contextual nuances of text.The writing of Edward Said, Lewis Nkosi, Es’kia Mphahlele and Can Themba comes to mind.

“African writers, it has been said, are too immersed in political experience. I hardly find that surprising for a nation that is still finding itself,” says Francis. Francis knows all too well that even a narrative on, say, football, told through the socio-political landscape of our time is obsessed with politics.

Born in Durban in 1960, Francis now lives in Johannesburg. Growing up, she first wanted to be a police officer, then a nurse. Her first job was as a reader in a press-cutting agency in Durban. Back in the 1980s, she tried her luck in the modelling world. She and the likes of Nakedi Ribane were grounded black women in apartheid South Africa who viewed make-up and hairpieces with suspicion. Despite their success in the world of modelling, they always stayed humble. “We were having a great time but never thought we were any better than anybody else,” she recalls.

She says they were aware of the privilege of representing a nation silenced by apartheid. From this experience, she has learnt that a person is all that they are and they ever will be. She believes it is important to make the best of oneself in whatever it is one chooses to do.
 
It was also during this period that she published a liquor-industry magazine called Spiritz. She later sold this publication and went on to establish the company African Perspectives. African Perspectives’ predecessor, Rose Francis Communications, was cited in Enterprise Magazine as one of the black communication consultancies to watch.

When asked about her journey as a media personality, Francis says she is not a gushing celebrity looking to be acknowledged. “I have invested in myself as a person and therefore require no further acknowledgement,” she says. She does what she is doing because someone has to do it, she says. Her job requires of her to constantly interact with people, and these interactions generally attract the right kind of publicity. Furthermore, this networking has lead to a strong database of contacts.

 “I know that I have a huge circle of people I can access should I need to,” she says. “I am confident about who I am.”

Francis has more than 20 years of professional experience as a communications strategist. Publishing is part of that communication space, and through her company she has the freedom to fully exploit the African perspective of the human narrative. Being black, she identifies with the majority of South Africans whose history is and has been distorted and in most cases swept under the carpet in the interests of portraying the rainbow nation. “I represent interpretations of a socio-historical experience that is essential to understand if we are to take our rightful place in the family of humanity,” she explains.

Through her company, Francis hosts school programmes that encourage reading and writing. Her vision through these programmes is that children will be able to interpret the various themes of each of the books they read.

As with many publishers in South Africa, she finds that the price of paper is extremely high and constantly has to face the allure of having one’s books printed overseas, where paper is cheaper; of course printing internationally is to the detriment of the local industry. Another thing is remaining competitive in a field where the margins are low and the commissions for shelf or retail listing are high. She says publishing in this country remains largely in the hands of the same people who owned it before 1994.

She was awarded the 2010 Workers World Media Award for Best Creative Publication for Nostalgic Waves from Soweto: Poetic Memories of June 16, a poetry anthology by Sol Rachilo. She published The State of South African Marginalised Publishing in South Africa, which was presented in Algeria in February 2011 by Professor Brigitte Ouvry Vial.

In 2009 she was a panellist at Khanya College during a discussion entitled “I Write What I Like: Publishing South Africa”. In 2010, she was a panellist during a discussion on reading at the Jozi Book Fair, where African Perspectives also had a stand. She says the fair was an excellent opportunity to engage with existing and potential readers. While contact with readers happens at occasions such as the Jozi Book Fair, she is in constant contact with the African Perspective authors, who live and work in different parts of the country. She’s very much under the impression of her responsibilities as a business owner. “Like any other business in a developing society, publishing is a social commitment too,” she explains.

In 2000, she was awarded the American Biographical Institute’s Millennium Medal of Honour for Entrepreneurial Development. The Department of Trade and Industry and the Black Business Council also nominated African Perspectives as one of South Africa’s top 300 empowerment companies.

Flattered by the accolades, she insists that good fortune played a part as much as hard work. “I was at the right place at the right time,” she says. “At the same time, I was at the genesis of the empowerment wave as I was already in business for 14 years by the time the big changes happened in the country.”
She believes that radio is a powerful medium in popularising literature. She says the creative process starts with the word. The audience that listens to radio, especially talk radio, is an engaged audience, and to it is relative easy to convert them to books.

“I was raised on radio. We listened to Jet Jungle, Squad Cars and Mark Saxon. Radio sparked my imagination,” she says.

A voracious reader, she read everything from comics and picture books through self-help books and biographies to fiction and non-fiction. At 19, she met Alex Haley, author of Roots, in New York. At the time she also met Joseph Okpaku of Third Press, the company that published Henry Kissinger and Angela Davies’ biographies. She was later introduced to the first African Nobel Peace Prize winner, Albert Luthuli. This launched her search for the African voice, she says.

African Perspectives distributes Letepe Maisela’s The Empowered Native, a fictional account of the 16 June 1976 student uprising. The work was recently aired on SAfm.

African Perspectives is also making available Don Mattera’s classic autobiography, Memory is the Weapon, on audio in September this year. This is the company’s first audio-book launch, and Mattera himself read an extract from the book on SAfm in February this year for the 56th anniversary of the Sophiatown forced removals.

Francis loves travel. Her interest in history provides her with constant curiosity, even when others do not see anything spectacular about a destination. When she is not working, she reads, cooks, listens to new music and engages with her daughters.

Her message to the younger generation: “If you don’t know who you are, there are enough people who will be more than willing to tell you.”

Rose Francis in brief:

• Is single with two daughters, Mika and Zara Julius.
• Has worked in Burkina Faso, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Loves South Africa, Tanzania and Zanzibar.
• Enjoys deep sea diving and snorkelling. Favourite spots include Mozambique’s Bazaruto islands, the Seychelles and Mtwara and Mikindani in southern Tanzania.
• Favourite genre of literature is non-fiction.
• The last painting she did was called Separation, an abstract piece using oil and sand on canvas.
• Currently listening to audio books ahead of African Perspectives’ first audio book launch in September.
• Hardly leaves her home without her All Stars.
• Is grateful for her children and life experiences she has encountered.
• Skydiving changed her perspective on life.