Cynthia Thanda

The PanAfrikanist community enjoys a plate full of words because knowledge is power and it is always interesting to meet Batswana writers.

But how about we bring a buffer? Writing plus a picture? That sounds like a warm breakfast for a PanAfikanist!

As per tradition, the PanAfrikanist met up with Tyler Majaga to engage him on his journey as a writer and cinematographer.

He is a 27-year-old film graduate currently working as a full-time cinematographer for an organisation called Ink Center for Investigative Journalism.

He was a freelance journalist for the Mmegi newspaper for about four years. He graduated in 2019 from the AFDA School of Motion Picture and Live Performance.

The challenges Tyler has faced are similar to every other writer in Botswana. It’s the small market in Botswana coupled with this misconception that Batswana generally don’t read, which makes it difficult for writers to sell their books.

He stated that publishing a book is difficult. Due to the lack of a reading culture, there are only a few publishing houses in the country and they are expensive because of the small market.

However, that never stopped Majaga from pursuing his dream. He managed to publish his first book – Episode one: Humble Beginnings – in 2013 under Tru Jam International.

The book did fairly well.

His second book titled Blue Skies in The South: Premise was published in 2016 by Teenagers Tales, which is his publishing house.

His third and fourth were collaborations with other writers: Rhapsody of Broken Lucid Dreams was published in 2018 while Hotwire was published in 2020.

Both books were under his publishing house. His biggest achievement is pre-selling 200 copies of his second book. He writes coming-of-age novels. His target audience is the youth because he covers socio-economic issues that affect young people.

Unfortunately, there are no copies of his books because they have sold out. He has not printed yet. He is currently looking for an international distributor to help market his books.

Besides writing, Majaga enjoys taking photos and making moments memorable for people. He was inspired by his father to get into photography.

His father used to lend him his camera and encouraged him to take pictures of random things which later on gave birth to his passion for editorial photography.

“I feel Photography is more received by Batswana. The books were okay but photography has a bigger market”, Majaga observed.