Why leisure time is a privilege

Known as the world’s largest festival celebrating the written word, the Edinburgh International Book Festival is a book lover's dream.

This year had a line-up of themes from Black Joy and the Business of Books to Queer Love and YA Voices. The sessions I ended up attending fell into the Legacies of Colonialism theme and discussed how we can deconstruct prejudiced perceptions of Africa.

The subject that all these conversations returned to was the need for equal access to opportunities. Although we usually associate such opportunities with things like education or employment, spending a weekend at such a major literary event drew my attention to another sort of opportunity that’s perhaps overlooked.

My biggest surprise about the festival was the number of families and young people there. The longest queues for book signings were made up of children and teenagers who were clearly bursting with excitement to meet these authors. There was even a small child — maybe six years old — who threw a tantrum when his parents made him leave the festival bookshop.

Although I too can imagine throwing a tantrum if forced to leave a bookstore, it felt foreign seeing such young people that deeply involved with reading culture. In South Africa, we are lucky enough to have a couple of literary events like this, but they certainly don’t reach the same size and range of audiences as they do in this country.

Then, during a talk about why Africa is at the centre of history, the journalist Howard W. French said this about the “great minds” of the west like Thomas Jefferson and Isaac Newton:

Do we think that they were just born as wonderful people who had great ideas or did they have the leisure to develop great ideas? Because they had exploited the labour of people from Africa that gave them the time to exploit these ideas or to develop these ideas. I said we’re all commonly endowed. Well, if you’re labouring on a plantation, you don’t have the time to put your feet up on a desk and daydream about falling apples or about the principles of democracy. That leisure created in some people —some exceptional people — the opportunity to develop their philosophies.

Leisure time is a privilege that I think we take for granted too often.

Attending book festivals, going to the cinema, or visiting a museum are all opportunities to let our minds run wherever they’d like. And living in a country where doing these sorts of things is a major part of everyday life has opened my eyes to just how impactful they are to a thriving society.

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