Morningside bookworm turns another chapter

When Scott Duncan was evicted from his stall at the Newmarket Stables after 23 years of trading, he thought he had lost his only source of income.

With a growing family to support, Duncan had to find another way to sell his books.

After getting the beurocratic run around from the city, Duncan eventually settled on selling his books outside his Morningside home on 90 Gordon road.

“Eventually I said dammit, R10 books outside the house, lets go,” said Duncan. “I started it three weeks before the lockdown and people started coming. That week before the lockdown, cars started pulling up and people were just buying 10, 20 books at a time and they said ‘I hope you going to keep it going’ and I said well I have plenty of books so I did.”

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By plenty of books, Duncan means 20 000. His storeroom with stacks of books, old and new, closely packed together wooden shelves, resembles a library from a fantastical film with Duncan being the eccentric bookworm.

He gets most of these books at garage sales, clearing houses and buying them off people who were moving out of the country in the early 2000’s.

Duncan, himself is not originally from South Africa. He was born and bred in New Zealand and is an avid rugby fan. For his recent 57th birthday, his daughters got him a cake with an All Blacks design.

Duncan said his first job was as a mailman before working at a bank in New Zealand shortly after finishing high school.

After a couple of years at the bank, he sold up all his belongings and began his sojourns across the world before setting in SA in 1992.

The Durban weather, the people, his South African wife and children have banished any thoughts of Duncan ever going back to New Zealand.

While selling books outside his home means he saves on some overhead expenses like rent and transport, Duncan is still brooding over losing his stall at the stables.

“I miss the stall holders, I miss the camaraderie. I miss the people that went to the stables, quite a few of them have found me now and are coming here (but) if stables reopen I will have a store there,” said Duncan.

Traders at the Newmarket stables were kicked out after the eThekwini Municipality elected to build a multi-million rand soccer academy on the land.

Like most SA’ns Duncan was anxious about crime and what opening his house to strangers could potentially mean.

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The fear of not being able to provide for his family eventually trumped his fear of crime and Duncan said there has never been any such incidents so far.

“I am having more fun conversing with people out here and that’s how I am, I love to talk to people,” he said.

With mountains of books at his disposal, with some aging back to the 19th century, Duncan regularly donates some unreadable ones to charities like the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) for recycling.

As a certified book lover who has read hundreds if not thousands of books and a man who has lived an interesting life, would Duncan ever think of writing a book himself?

“I would love to do it, it is in me but it has not come out yet, the actual thing that says I can do it,” said Duncan in between laughs. “Maybe there is a book in the pipeline, you never know.”

Duncan is based at 90 Gordon Road, Musgrave. You can contact him on 0832627186

Caxton Local Media Covid-19 reporting