MAMBO PRESS

Publishing Philosophy

• In a people, oriented and Christian humanist spirit, Mambo Press has, since its official opening in 1958, catered for the less literate majority of the population by not only pioneering publishing in the indigenous languages but also in addition to its devotional books for Christian living and worship, published for them fiction books for leisure and recreational reading as well as guides of a civic, educational and instructional nature.

• On the other hand, it has not neglected an elite readership with a high degree of literary sophistication and scholarship by its academic publications that even earlier on in colonial times fearlessly and positively focused on local scholarship and research against the background of traditional and modern Zimbabwe, thereby offering an alternative to the erstwhile metropolitan and foreign traditions.

• Publications have remained exclusively of a local character and with an earnest and sincere effort at promotion of indigenous knowledge and culture.

• Mambo Press's publishing philosophy is that it has never been a purely commercial enterprise. It has and still takes great commercial risks in publishing innovative scholarly and prestigeous works in the fields of religion, missiology, history, the social sciences and culture. In brief, it is controlled by considerations other than 'market forces' and has for that reason not aspired to enter the very lucrative school textbook market as a publisher. But for all this Mambo Press aims to be self-sustaining and innovative in its publishing operations.