Libraries are not merely places that keep books by George Eliot, Charles Dickens or Joseph Conrad: they are repositories of written records of South African society over centuries - and over the past three decades.

During a gathering of advocates and activists who collected books from across the US for shipping to Africa, mainly to west Africa, I once asked, somewhat cheekily, of the good folk in the Upper Midwest: "What books are you sending to Africa?"

Were these books about defunct and discredited theories and histories? Were they orthodox religious texts? Were they texts that promoted state-funded propaganda to turn the world into a single way of thinking about the world using the written word (and art, in general) rather than through destabilisation, fomenting of civil conflict and financing the overthrow of political leaders?

Books carry messages and meanings, they tell us about ourselves, about where we have been, where we are and where we are going, I explained.

There were muted responses. A man in a suit and tie smiled, stretched out a greeting hand, and expressed his sincerity in a combination of regret about not being able to destroy the books, and charity towards "the African child". He seemed sincerely disappointed by the fact that the books could not possibly be destroyed.

I referred, at the time, to a specific...