AWARD-WINNING artist Simphiwe Dana is hoping that people will pay as much attention to her message of the "importance of reading" as they do to her music

Dana, recipient of an impressive six Samas, is in KwaZulu-Natal as part of her Black Culture Education Tour that sees her visiting six cities around the country to promote reading through a book drive.

She has visited the famous Luthuli Museum in Stanger and spoken to high school pupils there on a subject that she says is close to her heart - reading.

"The state of our education has reached crisis levels, and we need to think like an endangered species. Parents must read to their kids, they must develop a culture of reading. If parents cannot read then they must tell stories to their children," she said.

Dana said she was shocked when she chatted to high school pupils in Stanger who were eloquent speakers in their mother tongue but become tongue-tied when they had to speak in English.

"We are going on a fact-finding, solutions-driven mission to try and inspire a nation into action, from the individual up. If our children do not make reading part of their daily lives, then the future looks bleak. They must read, and it is what took me out of my own little space when I was a child," she said.

She said vernacular-speaking students were placed at a disadvantage to their white counterparts because they were not eloquent in English, the medium of instruction at most tertiary institutions.

Dana's book drive is being run in conjunction with the Global Campaign for Education and 1Goal, both NGOs who have come out in support of her empowering initiative.