As more black South African authors emerge, the country's publishers are beginning to embrace this diversity. One platform is Blackbird Books, which focuses on up-and-coming black talent as well as untold African narratives. Its founder, Thabiso Mahlape, is a black female publisher who is helping to change South Africa's literary landscape. CGTN's Yolisa Njamela has more.

Meet Thabiso Mahlape.

Founder and owner of BlackBird Books Publishing House.

Mahlape has to date published a number of black authors.

BlackBird Books recently celebrated its success with a number of titles on the shelves and several new ones on the way.

This is a novelty in South Africa as publishing still remains a white people's domain.

But Thabiso is completely unfazed.

She publishes stories that she knows well.

YOLISA NJAMELA JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA "The Book publishing industry in South Africa has been extremely slow to transform. It lacks diversity. Mahlape wants to ensure that the status quo is changed."

THABISO MAHLAPE BLACKBIRD BOOKS PUBLISHING HOUSE "Black stories are the only stories that I know, that I'm intimately familiar with and I always tell people that my mom who died when I was twelve came from a small village outside Polokwane. It's called Newlands but it's Doornspruit but it somehow just got called Newlands. But she has been the biggest obsession of my life. So when you lose your mom at twelve, every single day becomes about what she would be doing and trying to understand her as well. So I want to tell stories of the people that come from where she came from, that looked like her and sounded like her."

She especially relishes telling the stores of those who are voiceless.

THABISO MAHLAPE BLACKBIRD BOOKS PUBLISHING HOUSE "So when I did, for example, Broken, broken which is a book on the shameful legacy of Goldmining in South Africa. When it got submitted to me, I immediately got connected to the thing about it where there are no men in the village because they're all off to migrant labour. But also that when I used to go to my mother's village because we'd go there over the holidays but when I was younger there were no men and I noticed it in my head that there's like basically no men. And then, later on, I grew up and there's like men mushrooming in one house or another but they didn't look good and soon enough they were dead. So that's the kind of stories that are in that book, stories of men who leave as healthy young men and then come back to die. So those are the stories I want to publish, it's things that I have seen and also for me it means to allow black people to begin to explain themselves."

The tide is turning now.

THABISO MAHLAPE BLACKBIRD BOOKS PUBLISHING HOUSE "It's turning, it's slow, it's not ideal for a person who's doing it as a business. But it's turning and it's encouraging and even if one day I feel, you know what, I'm tired, I'm laying my tools down, I would've seen a change I would've been part of a change."

She believes that the country urgently needs more black publishers.

Yolisa Njamela, CGTN, Johannesburg, South Africa.