Johannesburg — ANGLICAN Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, the University of the Free State's vice-chancellor Prof Jonathan Jansen, storyteller Gcina Mhlope and Department of Basic Education official Vincent Motau last night joined about 4500 people who participated in lobby group Equal Education's 24-hour Fast for School Libraries, which ends this evening.

Only 8% of SA's roughly 28000 public schools have stocked libraries, 13% have library space that was not stocked and 79% have no physical library space, according to government statistics. Equal Education has been campaigning for a policy on school  libraries for the past year under the banner "1 School, 1 Library, 1 Librarian".

A fast was a way of bringing together people from various backgrounds in peaceful protest, said Equal Education policy research and communications head Yoliswa Dwane. While the Basic Education Department battled infrastructure backlogs left over from the apartheid era, it was about to make publicly available a new set of national guidelines for school library and information science services, said spokesman Granville Whittle.

This would mean the department could "promptly" respond to schools' needs while incrementally ensuring libraries for all, Mr Whittle said.

The guidelines set targets for provinces, districts and schools and offered various library model options that were meant to suit a range of needs, Mr Whittle said. They also set targets for physical infrastructure, library management, staffing, administration, a multi-language policy, a reading programme and set out monitoring and evaluation plans.

Ms Dwane said the national guidelines were not binding and did not come with provision for a budget allocation or an implementation plan to roll out school libraries. "These developments are small progressive steps, but there are still clear gaps in policy which will continue to hinder the development of school libraries. Any plan to improve access to school libraries must at least include funding and support from the ( department)," she said.

Prof Jansen said the Equal Education fast was "an exciting project" because, for the first time in a long time, an organisation was using unusual means to draw attention to a cause.