ANFASA ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
MAGOEBASKLOOF HOTEL - 13 MARCH 2010
KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY TROND ANDREASSEN
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Trond Andreassen is the Secretary General of the Norwegian Non-fiction Writers and Translators Association since 1997. In this function he is a member of the Board of Directors at Kopinor since 1998, the Chairman of Kopinors' Committee for International Affairs since 2001, the leader of the Norwegian PLR negotiation team on behalf of the rightholders since 2005 and a member of the Editorial & Advisory Board of INDEX on Censorship since 1990. For the period 2005-2007 he was the elected President of the European Writers' Congress. He has been elected to the IFRRO Substitute Director representing creators in 2008. |
Address:
There are many differences between Norway and South Africa, of course, but I think it is fair to stress what we have in common and last night during dinner the National Librarian, John Tsebe, reminded us about the Scandinavian support to the ANC during the liberation struggle. Norway is a social democratic society based on equality and we supported the ANC for years. I remember my dad liked cape brandy but we boycotted all goods from SA just to put pressure on the regime and my dad skipped his cape brandy for a couple of years. In a way we created a bond between Norway and South Africa and the liberation movement. And in 1994 it was marvelous news for us in Scandinavia and the whole of Europe when Mandela came in. After that we started coming down to SA and then started asking questions like what about the writers in the new South Africa? Who is taking care of them? Around 1997-98 we went to JHB to meet with SA writers and then it was COSAWA and we were in touch with it till it went under. Then we were seeking on how to have a non-fiction association and to make the story short we contributed to the first efforts of setting up ANFASA.
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I would like to thank Monica Seeber in front of all of you for the work she did in setting up ANFASA and also to thank Kundayi Masanzu for the continued work he is doing. Last year we invited him and Virginia Phiri (ZANA) to Oslo and they took part in our AGM. It was good to have them there and they also took notice of what happened there and how we do things. Now I would like to introduce to you what we are doing in Norway, how we are operating and how the state and the literary sector are linked together and work together to better conditions for writers, books and readers and the key is to strengthen democracy in civil society. We are not here for ourselves but for what we can do in society at large. |
Let me remind you that Norway is small (5 million people) and my organization for non-fiction authors has 5 300 members and that should tell you that you have a great potential in this country because there are many academics and writers and you are six years old and just about to start on a journey building it up. Before I go to the concrete elements in the Norwegian literary system, I just want to mention a few prerequisites we find in our historical background
First of all we were liberated from Denmark nearly 200yrs ago, after being suppressed for 400yrs. So when we were liberated we went into a union with Sweden for nearly 100yrs but we started our nation building process in the 19th century and in this process literature played an important role. The building up of Norwegian institutions e.g publishing companies, organizing writers, booksellers, librarians all this was part of a nation building process.
Secondly, the promotion of a Norwegian language has been important for the development of literary institutions. For so many years we were oppressed to write and speak Danish. Then we started making use of our Norwegian language and that became an important tool as well because of oppression one does not write in one’s language, so after liberation writing in Norwegian language became popular it was the literary language and for empowerment writing in one’s language becomes popular
Thirdly the enlightenment process and that was tightly close to the building up of a library system. We needed books to be disseminated and we needed libraries to do so for free to the public. Last, but not least, after the second world war the social democrats, which were in power for a long period of time, were very concerned of creating equal opportunities for the people to have equal access to books at the same price.
Let me be a little more concrete. I will give you a brief insight in nine different tools all intended to support the book – production, dissemination and reading and you will see that some of these points are similar to what ANFASA is fighting for in SA.
First of all the very basic pillar for every system around the world. It’s obvious but I have to mention it because we have to fight for it every day; It’s the freedom of expression, that is the basics for every literary system everything rests on that it is in the constitution of most countries but we still have to fight for it everyday one example today, in Norway, Europe even in SA and even in India I saw it last week it’s the big multinational companies taking the whole market and publishing their best sellers what about the small and more important books, the serious books the small print runs do they make it into the market do they reach the reader, do these voices have the opportunity to be heard? This is a question of freedom of expression today, I think. Publishing companies are getting bigger they are going for high profit rates and you don’t see a book as a tool of enlightenment of education and all that we like to value it as and begin to see it as a thing that you should profit on and that is very dangerous.
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When preparing my speech I read the Mail and Guardian newspaper yesterday (March 12, 2010) about the theatre director; Mike Van Graan’s Keynote address to Time of the Writer Festival. He pointed at the larger symbolism of the storming out of the arts and culture minister lulu xgigwana from a lesbian photographic exhibition at the Constitution Hill. He says: “it doesn’t matter if rights are guaranteed on paper, those in power will always seek to create democracy in their self-serving image so that the artistic space of freedom of expression can never simply be assumed and needs to be asserted … and through struggling” yes, this is the situation in SA today, just a small example that we have to struggle for the freedom of speech everyday. |
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The second basis for every good and sound literary system is the protection of copyright. Most countries have copyright laws and most subscribe to the Berne convention, copyright in the different countries is not the same, but there are some basic similarities. The copyright law gives the fundamental basis for the protection of cultural goods and the writers and publishers need to have their rights protected by law. We also see that there is a gap always between the text as such, the copyright law written on paper, and society. Eg in Africa you have CR laws in most countries, but what about piracy, there is a lot of it going on and it steals from the author and everyone.
My third point deals with one very important tool in our endeavors to protect the small marginal titles in the book market. In several countries in Europe they have fixed book prices. Even in the midst of the European union - which you all know is based on the principle of free trade and not fixed prices - France and Germany, Italy and Spain have adapted laws regulating the markets, they have introduced laws protecting books in there own language and the diversity of books in the market. These countries fear that globalization will turn everyone into consumers of American products. Therefore they need the protection of fixed book prices which are protecting their own culture against American globalization, a cultural tsunami coming into Europe everyday. When cultural nations like France and Germany it should be a very important signal …….
The fourth point is also an important tool for the dissemination of books: no VAT (Value Added Tax) on books makes books cheaper for the public. Norway in 1967 removed VAT on books a while back and today the tendency in Europe now is most countries are moving towards a lower VAT on books than other commodities (usually around 6%). Why should this be reduced? Let me give you one example from our neighbor – Sweden. The Swedes reduced VAT from 25% to 12% in 2004 the result came immediately – the book sale increased by 15% the next year. So this is an important point when talking about how to support the book culture in society.
Fifth point, the libraries built by the state and municipalities this is a cornerstone in society. The modernization of the library system in Norway gained momentum at the beginning of the 20th century it led to the general enlightenment of the people. In 1985 we had an act of parliament stating that “public libraries shall be responsible for promoting knowledge, education and other cultural activities by providing access to information and by making available books and other material free of charge to everyone in Norway. Each library shall in its service to children and adults stress the importance of high quality comprehensive and up to date material.” This is important in a society that wants to develop and wants to be there for the citizens. Library activities should be directed towards the public and the services should be free. Public libraries are part of a national system and a large network that includes school libraries, research libraries and the national library. The activities of public libraries also includes service to patients in hospitals and health institutions, let me also say that libraries in prisons are also very popular in Norway and prisoners read a lot today much more than 10 years ago. I will revert to this point about the libraries later on when I talk about PLR.
My sixth point is about the reprographic right. The story is also very simple, it’s about how new technology creates new ways of exploiting literature. In the 1960ies and 70ies the photocopy machine was introduced in high scale in Norway and the big users were the schools and universities. The machines were used to copy textbooks and this was a huge violation of copyright. This is very important because the key word to meet the problem is to get organized. The writers, illustrators, composers, photographers, publishers got together and created an organization to safeguard their interests in this field. Provisions were made in the copyright law to develop a system to allow for this Reproduction Right Organization to function. The name is Kopinor – an equivalent to DALRO – but is operating a little bit different. Kopinor started in 1980 and membership is based on associations and not individuals. Kopinor currently has 21 memberorganizations and on behalf of the rightsholders it offers licenses to users for reprographic rights to all relevant types of works and by bi-lateral agreements it also represents foreign writers – e.g if your books are photocopied in Norway at the universities there is money paid out to you via DALRO. Kopinor model is based on the extended collective licensing model system which means than the association for rights holders in respective fields are giving power by law to represent the interests of individuals in the same field regardless of whether they are members of the association or not. This is a simple but very efficient tool. Today Kopinor collects fees for approximately 80% of copyright protected material in Norway in 2009 the figure was about US$33 million and that is a substantial amount for a country like Norway and this is then distributed to the different groups. NFF receives yearly around US$ 7 million.
How does this system benefit the authors? We invite them to apply for grants. We have two types of grants. There is the travel grant which make the receiver, members and non-members able to travel around the world0 and seek sources for writing a new book. About 40% of the remuneration goes to this. Then there is the project grant. This one is similar to the ANFASA grant, the writers will apply for funds to help them finish a book this can be a large amount of money, e.g teacher at school. You can take time off work to focus on the project and finish the book. Since 1983 when we started to give these grants we have been the midwife for more than 4 000 new books; important books for education, academic textbooks etc. so we also have special programs such as the support of young writers, non-fiction for children etc
One other important pillar is the PLR-system in Norway. I notice that ANFASA has started working on this campaign in SA. What I can say is that you need a lot of patience, it takes time…….We started our negotiations in the Nordic countries in 1918 and Denmark was the first to get PLR (1946). Norway was second in 1947, Sweden in 1954. Today it is an EU directive. This system gives some compensation to authors for books being lend out through the libraries. Of course this is good for the society because it puts authors in a better position to write and brings new books into the library in the end. If you succeed here in SA you will make history because you will be the first African country to introduce PLR. I think you are equipped to achieve this. I wish you good luck.
Since the national librarian is in our midst I would like to extend greetings to him from the national librarian in Norway. Because we have been co-operating very closely with the National librarian during the last 3-4years we have be able to start a new important service – called the the Norwegian bookshelf. What is the bookshelf? The national library digitize books (and all other material) in the national library, and at the moment all books from the 1990s 1890s 1790s 1690s are digitized and made accessible to the public? If a Norwegian logon to the National library website you can view all these books and this program will continue in the coming years and by 2011, 50 000 books will be digitized and in the end - 10 years from now - all material from the national library are digitized and a lot of it will probably be available to the Norwegian people. By this initiative we make over own “google” by the help of the Norwegian state and not a private enterprise.
The eight point. We have in Norway what we call a purchasing program for fiction and non-fiction. During the 1960s the sales of Norwegian contemporary fiction went down. This was astonishing because after WW2 book sales went up but thereafter people lost interest in books and moved to material things, shoes, refrigerators, cars. The state felt an obligation to do something – making sustainable structures so that books could be produced and distributed. This system of state purchase of contemporary books meant that the state bought 1 000 copies of every title of fiction and distributed it to the public libraries. This had immediate positive results for Norwegian fiction. It was limited to fiction literature.
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One thing to at this point is that if you are in the non-fiction side of literature you are a little bit down in the hierarchy because literature is mainly understood as fiction. The pyramid is such that at the top we find poets, then novelists, short storytellers and dramatis. Then below we find the non-fiction writers. The real authors are the fiction authors. In Finland some years ago I was talking about authors rights and the dissemination of literature etc and one finish poet said “you should not talk about this, because you are in charge of an association for people who write traffic guides……” so that is the case – we are not regarded to be real authors. Things are changing - it is not so expressed as it used to be. And yet we are quite significant players in the society. |
The state purchase programme was for many years dedicated to fiction, but after conducting a campaign for many years non-fiction books are also purchased; essays, documentaries etc.
Lastly I like to mention that we have a variety of grants distributed by the ministry of culture. These grant schemes are important for authors because it makes them live as professional authors.
I would like to conclude by stating that what we have done is just an example. I said at the beginning that there are so many differences between us and what you set up here in SA you have to do it your way. But still: If you want to develop an organization it s an important part of the strategy that you look at other countries and how they are addressing issues. As an earlier President of the European Writers Congress I have been monitoring various types of organizations and nations doing things differently, you will not find two PLR-schemes or RRO-organizations which operate exactly the same way. You have find your own way – and I wish all the best in your attempts to find that SA-way!!
Thank you for your attention!
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