Environmental influences and their impact on children’s literature in South Africa
For my first blog post, I’ll be responding to and offering my own personal commentary on an article written by E.R. Jenkins at the University of South Africa, titled, “English South African children’s literature and the environment.” In this article, Jenkins focuses on multiple environmental factors and how those have played into children’s literature written over the last few centuries. In particular, the environmental discussion seems to center around both the racial environment and contention found in South Africa, as well as the hunting culture and desire to both sponsor conservation while also supporting game preserves for trophy hunting.
Jenkins’ first topic for discussion is hunting, as hunting has been a large part of South Africa’s culture since it was first colonized. I’m not surprised that over the last one hundred years, the emphasis on hunting in children’s literature has drastically decreased due to, as Jenkins writes, “No author or publisher for children would want to appear so politically incorrect as to endorse [hunting]” (110). Tied closely with hunting is the idea of nature preserves and conservation efforts that have taken place in South Africa, which Jenkins also addresses. What strikes me as odd here though is that, unlike hunting as a whole, there was less of a push back until much later in 20th century. Jenkins writes, “[Jock of the bushveld by Percy FitzPatrick (1907)] is ethically acceptable to contemporary readers since the narrator hunted mostly for food, whereas the books of Victor Pohl, describing how as a young man he pointlessly shot creatures, were popular only until the 1970s, and then rapidly declined.”(113). My personal speculation here is that, while there are certainly parallels between hunting out of necessity and hunting for sport, I think that as of 2004 when this article was published, there was (and continues to be) increasing push back on hunting in general, even out of necessity. The focus on conservation overall and pushing for an examination of the ethics and morals related to hunting has resulted in a net decline in both “sides” of hunting, and while I find it interesting that Jenkins made a particular distinction, I can see why it was done.
The other major aspect of Jenkins’ article focuses on the racial environment of South Africa and its impact on children’s literature, especially with relation to apartheid. Even as recently as 1995, there has been racially charge literature related to race relations and game reserves, and making it seem normal that young black children in David Phiri’s Tikki’s wildlife adventure are uneducated and subject to the authority of the game preserves warden (Jenkins 116). For the most part, these books are extremely white washed and Jenkins’ writes that, “The silences in children’s books on certain aspects of the history of nature conservation cannot be overlooked. None, for example, mentions the forced removal of black people to make way for nature reserves.” (117) As unfortunate as this is, this also isn’t particularly surprising. The desegregation of South Africa was not terribly long ago, and there are still plenty of individuals alive who were in favor, and still likely in favor of those policies. I think that if this study were to be repeated today, approximately 14 years later, the results would likely be different with the millennial generation taking more of a leadership role in politics and pushing for social change. After just a cursory google search I was able to find a significant number of books (mainly picture books), that address the issue of race relations within South Africa. Now, none of the books that I saw off hand were specifically relating to the racism related to game preserves as well, but it definitely seems as if the issue of overall racism and the history of apartheid has been addressed by multiple authors.
After glancing around at other South African children’s literature that’s more recent than what Jenkins’ article addressed, I think if this article were to be rewritten for today, there would be a somewhat large amount of changes introduced. Over the fourteen years since this article was written, the world as a whole has seen a large shift as we move even further away from hunting for sport, and as race relations have continued to improve in South Africa.
Works Cited
Jenkins, E.R. “English South African children’s literature and the environment”. Literator. 2004. 107 – 123.