Apartheid in South African Children's Fiction

To appreciate fully the implacable attitude of the white oligarchy in South Africa today, one has to examine the relationship between political ideology and the literature that has entertained the present generation since childhood. When the Nationalist Party came to power in 1948, the Boer ideals were preserved through discriminatory legislation that classified South Africans according to racial origin, created homelands for the natives, restricted movements, made mixed marriages illegal and immoral, and reserved jobs based on race (Tutu 90). Apartheid, or the separate development that the above policies aimed at achieving, forms a subtle and inextricable part of children's reading. Through interesting, action-packed stories that enliven the history and achievements of the early Dutch settlers, children's fiction gives a message to white readers of their exclusive rights to South Africa.

Furthermore, South African children's fiction reflects not only the territorial dreams and ambitions of the early colonials, but the political, social and economic structure of present-day society as well. The books examined for this paper, published in English between 1947-1982, are a rationalization for the Afrikaner social attitudes of prejudice, self-interest and group identification. Fictional life is given to apartheid by perpetuating the myths of history and religion, by promoting literary stereotypes, and by undermining African culture and dignity.

Religion and politics have never been separated from the history and foundation of South Africa. From the very beginning, religion was used as a tool for political conquest and supremacy. The Dutch Calvinists and French Huguenots who came to Africa were religious dissidents who wanted to establish their own society; hence, every event that transpired in the course of their colonization of South Africa was interpreted by the religious myth that God had led His chosen people to South Africa to fulfill a pre-ordained purpose.

When the Dutch immigrants arrived at the Cape towards the end of the seventeenth century, the scramble for Africa had already begun: England, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain had each claimed its own coastal piece, and the Dutch East and West India Companies were already established. By 1806 the British had ousted the Dutch and proclaimed that the Cape was a British Colony. In the next two decades, the British government freed the African slaves and made it illegal for the Dutch to punish their Hottentot servants; the territory east of Fish River was prohibited to the settlers; and English was declared the official language (Lacour-Gayet 81-84). The Boers, dissatisfied by the liberal reforms of the British, migrated north of the Cape Colony. The "tradition of resistance" served as a unifying and motivating force and gave them the hope that God would protect them and victory would be theirs over the forces of oppression. The British were likened to the Pharaohs of Egypt who prevented the Dutch from exercising their freedom to live as they pleased. The Broken Spear records the Great Trek of thousands of Boer pioneers (voortrekkers) who left in the mid-1830s to seek their Promised Land. In Biblical fashion, they moved to Natal with their worldly possessions to escape the unfair British laws.

The historical novels also perpetuate the popular myth that the land the Afrikaners settled was empty and uninhabited by man or only "temporarily" occupied by wandering tribes. They believed that according to God's prophecy the land in Natal was preserved for them. In Look Out for the Ostriches, Jan Juta writes that before the Boers the Bushweld had "never felt the touch of human feet, that man has never disturbed it since the first primeval dawn" and "though Africa has thundered with the trampling of her thousands of black inhabitants, not even the echoes seem to have reached this wild region" (33).

Similarly, the hero of The Broken Spear finds it "strange and somehow unnerving that such a paradise that lay open and inviting should be so completely silent and empty" (33). In fact, the unpopulated areas they found were the territories conquered by Shaka, the Zulu king, who had either killed or driven away the Africans from those areas.

When the Boers claimed...