Narratives of agency: the experiences of Braille literacy practitioners in theKha Ri GudeSouth African Mass Literacy Campaign

In this article, we locate the Kha Ri Gude South African Mass Literacy Campaign within the context of the problem of illiteracy and exclusion in South Africa, while concentrating on various post-apartheid initiatives designed to give visually challenged adults the opportunity to become literate. We shall provide a detailed account of focus group sessions organised in 2012; the aim of these sessions was to explore the experiences of blind literacy practitioners who were charged with the supervision and coordination of Braille literacy classes for blind, illiterate adults. We suggest that the way the practitioners expressed what being involved in the Campaign meant for them for an extended period (three years or more) gives us a glimpse of how, through their roles as literacy organisers, they were able to engender agency among blind adult literacy learners and themselves.