AFLE 3100: African Literature

and the Environment

Dr. Witness Hassan Mdoka
 Introduction
• African literature does not occur in a vacuum. You will recall
that the African continent was under colonial rule for many
years. The historical context of Africa is interlocked with
colonialism, Christianity, and Islam.
 Introduction
• Globalisation and postmodernism have also affected the African
environment.
• Not many years ago, the African continent was covered with
forests “complete with life and life-sustaining resources. The
ubiquity of mammals, birds, reptiles, rodents, amphibians, creepy
crawlies, and trees that provide[d] different kinds of sheds,
grasses, thickets, epiphytes, fruits, mushrooms, and fish in rivers
flowing through the forest inform[ed] primordial bliss” (Mdoka
2023:212).
 Introduction
• That Africa was replete with forests, mountains, rivers, lakes,
terrestrial and aquatic life as well as exploitable natural resources
is reflected in literature, both oral and written.
• However, in this era of environmental crises and mechanistic
philosophies, the environment is rapidly deteriorating with
negative consequences for both humans and non-humans.
 Introduction
• The colonial legacy on the African continent is also devastating.
Imperialism and capitalism have negative effects on the African
environment. It is the responsibility of humans to protect
wilderness or nature.
 Introduction
• It is worth noting that the collapse of the USSR (Union of Soviet
Socialist Republic) after the Cold War, has led to globalization
with IMF and World Bank at the helm.
• The IMF and the World Bank imposed tough measures on
developing countries called Structural Adjustment Programmes
(SAPs).
 Introduction
• Many critics argue that SAPs impose harsh economic measures
that deepen poverty, undermine food security and self-reliance,
and lead to unsustainable resource exploitation, environmental
destruction, and population dislocation and displacement.
 Introduction
• Despite claims to the contrary, the World Bank-imposed SAPs
have paid little or no attention to their environmental impact.
SAPs call for increased exports to generate foreign exchange to
service debt. The most important exports of developing
countries include timber, oil and natural gas, minerals, cash
crops, and fisheries products.
 Introduction
• The acceleration of resource extraction and commodity
production that results as countries increase exports is not
ecologically sustainable.
• Deforestation, land degradation, desertification, soil erosion and
salinisation, biodiversity loss, increased production of greenhouse
gases, and air and water pollution are but among the long-term
environmental impacts that can be traced to the imposition of
SAPs.
 Introduction
• In sum, Western anthropocentrism is accused of being central to
the current state of environmental crises.
• The term “anthropocentrism” refers to human-centredness in
conceptualizing nature and the environment.
• In other words, it is an ethical belief that humans alone possess
intrinsic value. Anthropocentrism is the belief that the human
being exists at the centre of existence.
 Discussion
1. Think about the key factors that have contributed to
environmental crises in Africa.
2. Discuss SAPs in increasing poverty and the consequent
environmental degradation in Africa.
3. In your own words, describe the term “anthropocentrism.”
4. Define the terms:
a. “ecocentrism”
b. “biocentrism”
 The idea of wilderness or nature
• Human activities have silted rivers, polluted the air, land, and
oceans, altered climate patterns, acidified rains, and destroyed
the wilderness.
• What is wilderness? According to the American Wilderness Act
(1964), the term “wilderness” is defined as “an area where the
earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where
man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
 The idea of wilderness or nature
• Wilderness thus, is a natural area that is not permanently
occupied by people.
• The idea of “wild” regarding lands, animals, and plants as
opposed to “domestic” is a recent phenomenon because, before
this distinction, indigenous peoples in Africa did not distinguish
wilderness from themselves.
 The idea of wilderness or nature
• In the Palaeolithic period (the second part of the Stone Age),
humans had no antagonistic idea of wilderness because they
were an integral part of nature and they conceived of nature as
part of themselves.
 Defining Ecocriticism
• We live in an era of unprecedented events such as droughts,
floods, hurricanes, cyclones, wildfires, acid rains, global
warming, and climate change.
• Literature mirrors life and it involves different kinds of
relationships between and among humans and those
relationships between humans and non-humans.
 Defining Ecocriticism
• These relationships are portrayed in literary texts. By shifting
from an Aristotelian focus on plot, characters, and themes, for
example, the study of literature now focuses on the relationship
between literature and the environment.
 Defining Ecocriticism
• Glotfelty (1996: xviii) defines the term “ecocriticism” as “the
study of the relationship between literature and the physical
environment. Just as feminist criticism examines language and
literature from a gender-conscious perspective, and Marxist
criticism brings an awareness of modes of production and
economic class to its reading of texts, ecocriticism takes an earth-
centred approach to literary studies.”
 Defining Ecocriticism
• The first part of this definition considers “the study of the
relationship between literature and physical environment.” The
physical environment includes mountains, lakes, oceans, rivers,
plastics, trees, animals, and land, terrestrial and aquatic life;
biotic and abiotic entities.
 Defining Ecocriticism
• Like feminism and Marxism, ecocriticism involves activism that
engages with ecocentrism, that is, an earth-centred criticism of
literary texts. In using this approach to the study of literature, the
literary critic bears in mind that “human culture is connected to
the physical world, affecting it and affected by it” (Glotfelty
1996: xix).
 Defining Ecocriticism
• This leads to the interconnectedness of ecological entities in the
ecosystem where every organism has a niche. Literature, is,
therefore, not studied in a vacuum.
 Defining Ecocriticism
• The first law of ecology states that “Everything is connected to
everything else.” For Rueckert (1996), ecocriticism entails “the
application of ecology and ecological concepts to the study of
literature.”
• The environment – the land – is not merely the stage on which
the human story is acted, but rather it is the actor in the drama.
• Ecocriticism is variously referred to as ecopoetics, environmental
literary criticism, and green cultural studies.
 Defining Ecocriticism
• Ecocriticism is analogous to the study of how nature is
represented in literature focusing on, among other topics,
frontier, animals, cities/towns, specific geographical regions,
rivers, mountains, deserts, and garbage.
• The term eco prefixed to criticism derives from ecology to refer
to ecological criticism.
 Defining Ecocriticism
• The concepts of eco and critic are derived from Greek oikos and
kritis/kritos (krites) meaning nature, “our widest home” and
“judge,” respectively.
• Literary environmental critics are interested in keeping nature in
order. In other words, they are activists for environmental
conservation, environmental protection, and environmental
justice, among others.
 Defining Ecocriticism
• Ecocriticism is an interdisciplinary study of literature and the
environment that draws from other disciplines such as ecology,
history, philosophy, anthropology, religion, and anthrozoology
or animal studies.
 Discussion
a. Define the term “ecocriticism.”
b. Explain how the application of ecology and ecological
concepts to the study of literature is possible.
c. Why does ecocriticism (alternatively, ecopoetics or
environmental literary studies), require activism?
d. Compare ecocriticism with a feminist or Marxist approach to
the study of literature.
 Origin and Development of Ecocriticism
• “Ecocriticism” or “green studies” are terms used to denote a
critical approach that began in the USA in the late 1980s, and in
the UK in the early 1990s, and since it is still an ‘emergent’
movement, it is worth briefly setting out its institutional history
to date.
• American ecocriticism was already a growing academic
movement by the early 1990s, beginning to establish its
professional infrastructure of designated journals and an official
corporate body.
 Origin and Development of Ecocriticism
• Ecocriticism as a concept first arose in the late 1970s, at meetings
of the WLA (the Western Literature Association, a body whose
field of interest is the literature of the American West).
• Michael P. Branch traces the word “ecocriticism” back to William
Rueckert’s 1978 essay “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in
Ecocriticism.”
 Origin and Development of Ecocriticism
• A claim for first usage in literary criticism of the related term
“ecological” is made by prominent US ecocritic Karl Kroeber,
whose article “Home at Grasmere: Ecological Holiness”,
appeared in the journal PMLA, 89, (1974: 132-41).
• Both terms “ecocriticism” and “ecological” apparently lay
dormant in the critical vocabulary replacing what was previously
referred to as “the study of nature writing.”
 Origin and Development of Ecocriticism
• Ecocriticism, as it now exists in the USA, takes its literary bearings from
three major nineteenth-century American writers whose work
celebrates nature, the life force, and the wilderness as manifested in
America, these being Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Margaret
Fuller (1810-1850), and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862).
• All three were ‘members’ of the group of New England writers,
essayists, and philosophers known collectively as the
transcendentalists, the first major literary movement in America to
achieve ‘cultural independence’ from European models.
 Origin and Development of Ecocriticism
• By contrast, the UK version of ecocriticism, or green studies,
takes its bearings from the British Romanticism of the 1790s
rather than the American transcendentalism of the 1840s.
• The founding figure on the British side is the critic Jonathan Bate,
author of Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the
Environmental Tradition (1991).
 Origin and Development of Ecocriticism
• British ecocritics also make the point that many of their concerns
are evident (before the term “ecocriticism” existed) in Raymond
Williams’s book The Country and the City (1973).
• The infrastructure of ecocriticism in the UK is less developed than
in the USA, though there is a UK branch of ASLE (Association for
the Study of Literature and Environment), the provision of
relevant course options on undergraduate degree programmes is
becoming more widespread, especially in new universities and
colleges of higher education.
 Origin and Development of Ecocriticism
• It is worth noting that “Romantic ecology” is a phrase given
wide currency by Jonathan Bate’s slim but incisive volume,
Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition
(1991). Written in a lively and accessible style, and appealing to
the heads of the professional critics to the ‘common reader’,
Bate’s book has been much discussed and highly influential.
• It intervenes effectively in two literary-critical debates, and this
intersection of concerns has been a major factor in its success.
 Origin and Development of Ecocriticism
• First, it intervenes in the field of Wordsworth studies, where Bate
grandly rejects the ‘counter-intuitive’ readings of Wordsworth
offered by recent critics and theorists, and recommends a return
to nineteenth-century approaches to the poetry: “a primary aim
of this book is to recapture something of what Wordsworth did
for the nineteenth century.”
 Origin and Development of Ecocriticism
• But to attend to Wordsworth in this fashion is to “relearn [his]
way of looking at nature” (p. 9). His book is not, after all,
simply a study of Wordsworth, but a reflection on what literary
criticism can be and do today, on what it has recently been and
done, and what it should now be and do.
 Origin and Development of Ecocriticism

• Transcendentalism was a cultural movement that arose during

the first half of the 19th century. Transcendentalism’s definition
centres around the idea that humans have knowledge from
nature that goes beyond what can be understood with the
senses. During this period, two major factors encouraged
authors, artists, and activists to organise this movement.
 Origin and Development of Ecocriticism
• In the United States and Europe, Romanticism was the dominant
artistic movement at the start of the 1800s. Romanticism focused
on the beauty of nature as well as the simplicity in life by
emphasizing freedom, spontaneity, and the importance of love
in literature and art. Many paintings from this period idealized
the farmer’s lifestyle as perfect because they could manage their
own time and were constantly in touch with nature.
 Origin and Development of Ecocriticism
• The basic beliefs of this movement are that humans have a
universal soul with nature, one should trust their intuition, and
nature can be restorative, especially in a time of industrialization.
Transcendentalists believed that immersion in an embrace of
nature could help people live more meaningful and fulfilling life.
 Origin and Development of Ecocriticism
• The main ideas of this movement were that humans need to be
self-reliant, that independence and freedom are invaluable, and
nature should be studied and understood on a personal level.
These points were based on the idea that humans are connected
to nature, so everything a person needed spiritually and
emotionally could be found there.
 Discussion
a. What is the role of nature writing in the literature of British
Romanticism and American Transcendentalism in the rise of
Anglo-American ecocriticism?
b. Discuss with your colleagues, the meanings of “Romanticism”
and “Transcendentalism.”
 Summary
• Notice that humans were generating, transmitting, and applying
information about the natural world long before scientific
inquiry was formalised.
• Indigenous peoples around the world have developed,
maintained, and evolved knowledge systems via direct
experience of interacting with biophysical and ecological
processes, landscapes, ecosystems, and species over millennia
(Atleo, 2011; Berkes, 2018).
 Summary
• Application of these broad and deep knowledges in a scientific
context has led to many contributions to the literature in
ecology, evolution, and related fields, but has not yet been
comprehensively synthesised.
 Key Questions Ecocritics Ask
According to Glotfelty (1996), ecocritics ask these questions:
1. How is nature represented in this sonnet or poem?
2. What role does the physical setting play in the plot of the novel?
3. Are the values expressed in this play consistent with ecological wisdom?
4. How do our metaphors of the land influence the way we treat it?
5. How can we characterise nature writing as a genre?
6. In addition to race, class, and gender, should place become a new critical
category?
7. Do men write about nature more differently than women do?
8. In what ways has literacy itself affected humankind’s relationship to the
natural world?
 Key Questions Ecocritics Ask
9. How has the concept of wilderness changed over time?
10. In what ways and to what effect is the environmental crisis
seeping into contemporary literature and popular culture?
11. What view of nature informs African Governments’ reports,
corporate advertising, and televised nature documentaries, and
to what rhetorical effect?
12. How is science itself open to literary analysis?
13. What cross-fertilisation is possible between literary studies and
environmental discourse in related disciplines such as history,
philosophy, psychology, art history, and ethics?
 Discussion

Analyse how nature is represented in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s

novel, Weep Not, Child.
 Historical Foundations of Outlook on
Nature
• What is African environmental literature?
• What environmental issues are revealed in African literature?
• How do African authors represent African environments?
• Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, a classic of African literature,
for example, has been read and studied as an African
postcolonial novel that aims to reconstruct precolonial African
cultural identity in general and traditional Igbo cultural identity
in particular.
 Historical Foundations of Outlook on
Nature
• However, this novel can also be read as an environmental
novel.
• In “Things Fall Apart fifty years after: An ecocritical reading”,
Nchoujie Augustine (2009) foregrounds Achebe’s environmental
consciousness by examining “the ecological component”
(Augustine 2009: 107) that Achebe integrates into his writing,
such as the imagery of the African forest, especially the forest’s
influence on the sustainability of the Igbo community, as well as
its correlation with Igbo customs.
 Historical Foundations of Outlook on
Nature
• Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George Handley, in their introduction
to Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment (2011),
argue that the “narrative shift” (DeLoughrey and Handley 2011:
7) of Achebe’s novel from an oral, Igbo-centred narrative (as
revealed in the first two parts of the novel) to a written,
colonial-dominated narrative (as revealed by the district
commissioner’s suggested book title, The Pacification of the
Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger in the last part of the novel)
implies the author’s critique of the environmental transformation
in Igbo-land caused by European colonisation.
 Historical Foundations of Outlook on
Nature
• Ecocriticism in Africa, often framed by the postcolonial problem,
appears to have a lot of focus on the notion of environmental
justice.
• This kind of ecocriticism, rooted in protest aesthetics, aligns with
the eco-activists of the likes of Wangari Mathai of Kenya and Ken
Saro-Wiwa of Nigeria who have, in different ways, contributed
immensely to the literary awareness of the physical
confrontation against the institutional powers that cause
environmental degradation in Africa.
 Historical Foundations of Outlook on
Nature
• These environmental writers expose the business of extractive
capitalism responsible for harmful practices like gas flaring, oil
spills, oil bunkering, water and air pollution, tree felling, and
other activities that are inimical to the biodiversity of the
continent.
 Historical Foundations of Outlook on
Nature
• Considering the general degradation that reduces the
postcolonial societies to what Frantz Fanon call “the wretched of
the earth,” it could be agreed that these writers’ focus on “the
environmentalism of the poor” is not out of place.
• However, this rubric deemphasises the nonhuman implication of
the environmental tragedies, leaves untapped the full potentials
of those literary genres that aestheticise relations across species,
and expands the vision for ecological sustainability.
 Historical Foundations of Outlook on
Nature
• While ecocriticism remains closely associated with literary
studies, the term ecocriticism is increasingly also used to denote
work in other disciplines focused on issues of environmental
representation (work often influenced by literary and critical
theory).
 Historical Foundations of Outlook on
Nature
• Ecocriticism has always had an interdisciplinary component,
although the necessary relationship between ecocriticism and
science (especially ecology) has been complicated, and is also
closely associated with political advocacy and specifically with
theorizing “about the place of literature in the struggle against
environmental destruction.”
 Historical Foundations of Outlook on
Nature
• Ecocritics seek to make their work relevant to efforts directed at
understanding environmental degradation and finding less
destructive ways of living with and within nature than those
offered by the dominant modern ways of the world.
 Reading materials
1. Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Weep Not, Child
2. NoViolet Bulawayo’s Glory
3. Zakes Mda’s Heart of Redness
4. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists
 Ecology, Culture and Literature
• Ecology is the study of the relationships between organisms and
their environment, the “economics” (or livelihood) of the earth
and its totality of life forms.
• The term ecology comes from the Greek words oikos (“house”
or habitat) and logos (“word,” here in the sense of “academic
discipline”).
• It was given its contemporary usage by Ernst Haeckel in 1866.
Most of the concepts used in human ecology have been
borrowed from biology, so an understanding of the basic notions
of biological ecology is essential.
 Ecology, Culture and Literature
• The study of the relationships between culture and environment
is not just academic, it is vital, not simply because it is interesting
but because it offers understanding and possible solutions to
important contemporary problems. Issues of deforestation, loss
of species, food scarcity, and soil loss are on the minds of many
and are addressed by human ecologists.
 Ecology, Culture and Literature
• Culture, learned and shared behaviour, is the fundamental
element that sets humans apart from other animals. (Many
animals learn some of their behaviour socially, but only humans
make an enormous project of it.) The vast complexities of
human behaviour derive from culture, based to be sure on
biology.
 Ecology, Culture and Literature
• Culture is largely transmitted through language, which, as far as
we know, is unique to humans. In addition, every person
belongs to a culture, a group of people who share the same basic
pattern of learned behaviour, the same values, views, language,
and identity. Each culture’s bearers hold an identity unto
themselves and recognise that they are different from other
cultures.
 Ecology, Culture and Literature
• As David Schneider (1976) saw it, culture consists “of elements
which are defined and differentiated in a particular society as
representing reality – the total reality of life within which human
beings live and die” (206). Today, the politics of the use of the
concept of culture is such an explosive topic that no literary critic
can afford to remain naive about the issues involved.
 Ecology, Culture and Literature
• Ethnography is the study of a particular group at a particular
time, and ethnology is the comparative study of culture. The
District Commissioner in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart writes his
book, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger,
as an ethnographer of the culture of Umuofia, for example.
 Discussion
1. Using illustrations, examine how ecology, culture and literature
are interrelated.
2. Use four points, two in each case, to explain how Indigenous
Knowledge (IK; as the myriad knowledges are collectively
referred), and non-Indigenous science (sometimes referred to
as ‘Western Science’ or just ‘Science’), represent distinct but
complementary ways of knowing.
 Biotic and Abiotic Components of the
Environment
• Biotic factors: this includes all living-organisms, that is, plants and
animals (in a general sense)
• Abiotic factors: this includes all non-living organisms such as
mountains, rain, soil, (these are the physical parameters). Others
include pH - acidity or alkalinity and other chemical factors.
 Biotic and Abiotic Components of the
Environment
• The external environment includes interrelationships between
abiotic and biotic components.
• The biotic component of the environment consists of living
things that play different niches in the ecosystem.
• The study of the classification, use, and knowledge of the biotic
environment is called ethnobiology.
• Ethnobiology is a major component of cultural ecology and
includes studies on human diet, classificatory systems, rituals, and
the knowledge and use of plants and animals.
 Biotic and Abiotic Components of the
Environment
• The study of the native classification and use of plants is called
ethnobotany. Plants are used for a great variety of purposes,
including food, building materials, tools, textiles, and decoration,
among others. If one is dependent on plants for these purposes,
one’s knowledge of plants would have to be considerable.
 Biotic and Abiotic Components of the
Environment
• A detailed understanding of plant locations, season of
availability, general chemistry, durability, and biology is required
for successful exploitation. The knowledge that traditional
people have about botany is considerable, and many plants
currently unknown to Western science are being used on a
routine basis in other cultures.
 Biotic and Abiotic Components of the
Environment
• Ethnozoology is the study of “the knowledge of, use of, and
significance of animals in indigenous and folk societies” (Overall
1990:127).
• Such knowledge includes the biology, seasonality, reproduction,
edibility, and utilisation of animals. Some species may be used
for food, some for skins, some for bone, some for poison, and
some for many other things.
 Biotic and Abiotic Components of the
Environment
• The more intimate the knowledge one has about different
animals, the greater flexibility one has in using them. When most
people think of animals, they generally only think of vertebrates,
often mammals. However, most animals are invertebrates,
primarily insects.
 Biotic and Abiotic Components of the
Environment
• The study of the traditional knowledge used for medical
purposes is called ethnomedicine.
• Some of this knowledge includes the setting of broken bones and
the like. Still, it mostly involves ethnopharmacology, the
classification and use of plants, animals, and other substances for
medical purposes (see Mdoka, “Eco-pharmacopoeia, Animal and
Plant Lore in Malawian Folktales,” 2023).
• Ethnobiology, ethnozoology, and ethnopharmacology are best
studied in cultural ecology.
 Biotic and Abiotic Components of the
Environment
• Cultural ecology is the study of the adaptation of a culture to a
specific environment and how changes in that environment lead
to changes in that specific culture.
• It also focuses on how the overall environment, natural
resources available, technology, and population density affect
the rest of the culture and how a traditional system of beliefs
and behaviour allows people to adapt to their environment. All
living things interact, including other living things.
 Biotic and Abiotic Components of the
Environment
• Zapf defines cultural ecology as “a new direction in recent
ecocriticism which has found considerable attention […] in the
field. A cultural ecology of literature proposes a transdisciplinary
approach to literary texts, in which the interaction and mutual
interdependence between culture and nature is posited as a
fundamental dimension of literary production and creativity”
(Zapf 2016).
 Biotic and Abiotic Components of the
Environment
• Cultural ecology aims to find the meeting point and the
interconnections that exist between the anthropocentric
perspective of literature and culture, in which nature is reduced
to a definition coined by humans, and ecocentrism, characterized
by a nature-centred system of processes.
 Biotic and Abiotic Components of the
Environment
• This kind of view on the interdependent relationship between
nature and culture sees literature as the most suitable cultural
means to analyse critically the evolution of present-day society,
that can work as “an ecological force within the larger system of
cultural discourses” (Zapf 2016).
 Discussion
1. Use four points to explain how the biotic and abiotic
components are reflected in African literature.
2. Discuss how the “culture” and “nature” interplay is
represented in African literature. Use four points and relevant
illustrations.
3. Critically analyse how culture and nature are portrayed in the
following poem by George Awoonor-Williams entitled “The
Weaver Bird.”
The weaver bird built in our house
And laid its eggs on our only tree
We did not want to send it away
We watched the building of the nest
And supervised the egg laying. 5
And the weaver returned in the guise of the owner
Preaching salvation to us that owned the house
They say it came from the west
Where the storms at sea had felled the gulls
And the fishers dried their nets by lantern light 10
Its sermon is the divination of ourselves
And our new horizons limit at its nest
But we cannot join the prayers and answers of the
communicants.
We look for new homes every day,
For new altars we strive to re-build 15
The old shrines defiled from the weaver’s excrement.
 Deep Ecology
• Adherents of the deep ecology movement share a dislike of the
human-centred (anthropocentric) value system at the core of
European and North American industrial culture. Deep ecologists
argue that environmental philosophy must recognise the values
that inhere objectively in nature independently of human wants,
needs, or desires.
 Deep Ecology
• Arne Naess invented the term deep ecology in a famous 1973
English-language article, “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range
Ecology Movement: A Summary.” By “ecology movement”
Naess means a cosmology or worldview. Naess faults European
and North American civilisation for the arrogance of its human-
centred instrumentalisation of nonhuman nature. He contrasts
his new “deep” (or radical) ecological worldview with the
dominant “shallow” (or reform) paradigm.
 Deep Ecology
• Deep ecology in its narrow academic sense rests on two
fundaments: an axiology (the study of the criteria of value
systems in ethics) of “biocentric egalitarianism” and an ontology
(the study of existence) of metaphysical holism which asserts that
the biosphere does not consist of discrete entities but rather
internally related individuals that make up an ontologically
unbroken whole. Both principles are rooted in an intuitive
epistemology reminiscent of Descartes’ “clear and distinct”
criteria – once you grasp them, their truth is beyond doubt.
 Deep Ecology
• The first principle, biocentric egalitarianism – known also by
other phrases that combine biocentric, biospherical, and
ecological with equality and egalitarianism (Naess 1973: 95;
Devall and Sessions 1985:67-69) – holds that biota has equal
intrinsic value; it denies differential valuation of organisms. In
the words of Naess, “the equal right to live and blossom is an
intuitively clear and obvious value axiom” (1973: 96).
 Deep Ecology
• In the words of the sociologist Bill Devall, writing with George
Sessions, “all organisms and entities in the ecosphere, as parts of
the interrelated whole, are equal in intrinsic worth” (1985:67).
Naess shrewdly pre-empts invariable attacks on this idea of the
equal worth of all organisms by adding the qualifier “in
principle” because “any realistic praxis necessitates some killing,
exploitation, and suppression” (1973:95). This qualifier has not,
however, staved off criticisms of biocentric egalitarianism.
 Deep Ecology
• The second principle is metaphysical holism. One can apprehend
ontological interconnectedness through enlightenment or “self-
realisation” (Devall and Sessions 1985: 67–69; Naess 1987). As
Fox says, ‘‘It is the idea that we can make no firm ontological
divide in reality between the human and the nonhuman realms.
[…]. [T]o the extent that we perceive boundaries, we fall short
of deep ecological consciousness’’ (Fox 1984:196).
 Deep Ecology
• Through this awakening, the ontological boundaries of the self-
extendedness outward, incorporating more and more of the life
world into the self. This insight discloses that there is in reality
only one big Self, the life world, a notion developed in the
article ‘‘The World Is Your Body’’ (Watts 1966).
The Eight-Point Platform of Deep Ecology

1. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on

Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value,
inherent worth). These values are independent of the usefulness
of the non-human world for human purposes.

2. The richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the

realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
The Eight-Point Platform of Deep Ecology

3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity

except to satisfy vital needs.

4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a

substantially smaller human population. The flourishing of
non-human life requires a smaller human population.
The Eight-Point Platform of Deep Ecology

5. Present human interference with the non-human world is

excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.

6. Policies must therefore be changed. These policies affect basic

economic, technological, and ideological structures. The
resulting state of affairs will be deeply different from the
present.
 The Eight-Point Platform of Deep Ecology

7. The ideological change will be mainly that of appreciating life

quality (dwelling in situations of inherent value) rather than
adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living. There will
be a profound awareness of the difference between bigness and
greatness.
8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation
directly or indirectly to try to implement the necessary changes
(Naess 1986:14).
 Discussion
1. Explain the philosophical foundations of deep ecology.
2. Use examples to explain whether deep ecology is philanthropy
or misanthropy.
The Impact of Colonisation on the African
Continent
• Colonialism began in Africa in the fourteenth century, with the
primary objective of accumulating wealth at the expense of
African peoples. To achieve this purpose, some European nations
obliterated African autonomy by creating colonial territories, to
harness Africa’s natural resources without constraint to expand
their economic systems.
The Impact of Colonisation on the African
Continent
• In retrospect, recognising the impact of colonialism, it is
unquestionable that, while Africa significantly contributed to the
development of the world, its peoples were disproportionately
dispossessed of their natural resources and their livelihood
endangered.
The Impact of Colonisation on the African
Continent
• In the face of these historic injustices, as Africa looks to create her
own development, the departure point would be to correct the
current inconsistency of being rich in natural resources, yet poor
and underdeveloped. The right to self-determination entails for
Africans to have control over, and exercise the right to
permanent sovereignty over natural resources, to achieve
continental development.
The Impact of Colonisation on the African
Continent
• Reflecting on the ethos of African Renaissance and Pan-
Africanism, which are anchored on the need for “collective self-
reliance”, the African Union adopted Agenda 2063 in 2015 as a
continental roadmap to structural transformation, inclusive
growth, and sustainable development. To fulfil the aspirations
contained in Agenda 2063 requires prioritizing the right to
permanent sovereignty over natural resources. In this regard,
resource nationalism is a means to achieve the right to
development in Africa.
 Discussion
• Examine how Malawi 2063 intends to provide solutions to
environmental challenges in Malawi.
• Enabler 7: Environmental Sustainability (pp. 43-44): “The challenges
confronting environmental sustainability in Malawi are both
externally and internally induced. These include: natural disasters
and climate adversities; environmental degradation; weak
institutional capacity and coordination exacerbated by political
interference in regulation and enforcement; limited awareness of
environmental best practices; data gaps and limited funding for
environment sustainability initiatives.”
 Postcolonial Ecocriticism
• Postcolonial ecocriticism takes the challenge to respond to two separate
fields; postcolonial and ecocriticism, by studying the environment as a
complete body composed of humans, animals, and land. It redirects critical
thinking towards the relationship between humans (indigenous and foreign)
and land and humans and nonhumans. Postcolonialism and ecocriticism can
appear fraught with tension. Postcolonialism is often seen as
anthropocentric, primarily concerned with social justice, and emphasising
concepts such as hybridity and displacement. Ecocriticism, on the other
hand, is often considered to be earth-centred, primarily concerned with
animal rights and environmental conservation, emphasising natural purity
and ‘belonging.’
 Postcolonial Ecocriticism
• The idea of place is the connecting rod between postcolonialism
and ecocriticism since postcolonialism focuses on the reimagining
of the history of a colonised place while ecocriticism critically
theorises for a return to or conservation of a pristine place. On
the one hand, both theories are distinct in their methodology,
and on the other, both seem to thrive on upturning binaries: for
postcolonialism, the West/Other binary, and for ecocriticism, the
Human/Nature binary. Also, postcolonialism favours discourses
from and of former colonies while ecocriticism venerates the
American and British models of nature.
 Postcolonial Ecocriticism
• When Frantz Fanon (1961) argued that “for a colonised people
the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and
foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and,
above all, dignity” (cited in DeLoughrey & Handley, 2011: 3), he
perhaps had laid the foundation for the critical field of
postcolonial-ecocriticism. Drawing from the words of Fanon, the
term “land” is the most defining feature of the former colonies
and this, aside from being an identity marker, is also a source of
livelihood to the inhabitants (both the coloniser and the
colonised) of former colonies both before and after physical
colonialism had ended.
 Postcolonial Ecocriticism
• This explains why the ideological concerns of postcolonial critics (for
instance, Franz Fanon,1961; Gayatri Spivak,1988; Edward Said,1993; and
Homi Bhabha,1994); and ecocritical critics (such as Lawrence Buell, 2001;
Glen Love, 2003; and Timothy Morton, 2007) can be brought into
collaboration towards achieving a better theorisation on colonised people
and their natural environment. While ecocriticism started off as an
intellectual movement with a focus on the conservation of nature
particularly “the wilderness”, postcolonialism is preoccupied with the
“analytics of place, power, knowledge and representation” (Elizabeth
DeLoughrey, 2014:321). Thus, postcolonialism and ecocriticism seem to
converge on the point that both fields are concerned with the idea of the
representation of place, postcolonialism focuses on the historicity of place
and ecocriticism hinges on the aesthetics of place.
 Discussion
1. Analyse points of confluence between postcolonialism and
ecocriticism.
2. Examine nature/the environment is portrayed in Zakes Mda’s
novel, The Heart of Redness.
 Ecofeminism
• Ecofeminism is a branch of criticism that seeks to analyse and interpret the
relationship between women and nature. It describes movements and
philosophies that link feminism with ecology. Ecofeminism is interested in
the particular and significant connections between women and nature; it
seeks to interpret their repression and exploitation in terms of the
repression and exploitation of the environment. Eco-feminists believe that
these connections are illustrated through traditionally "female" values such
as reciprocity, nurturing, and cooperation, which are present both among
women and in nature. Women and nature are also united through their
shared history of oppression by a patriarchal Western society.
 Ecofeminism
• Women and nature are closely tied together and their role in society is
predicated on a common goal which is to nurture, reproduce, and recreate.
This is often ignored, neglected, and exploited in a patriarchal world.
Vandana Shiva in her opinion claims that women have a special connection
to the environment through their daily interactions and this connection has
been ignored. She says that women in subsistence economies who produce
“wealth in partnership with nature, have been experts in their own right of
holistic and ecological knowledge of nature’s processes.” However, she
makes the point that “these alternative modes of knowing, which are
oriented to the social benefits and sustenance needs are not recognised by
the capitalist reductionist paradigm because it fails to perceive the
interconnectedness of nature, or the connection of women’s lives, work,
and knowledge with the creation of wealth” (3).
 Ecofeminism
• As Adrian Harris points out, ecofeminists agree that the
domination of women and the domination of nature are
fundamentally connected and that environmental efforts are
therefore integral with work to overcome the oppression of
women. The primary aims of eco-feminism are not the same as
those typically associated with liberal feminism. Ecofeminists do
not seek equality with men as such but aim for the liberation of
women as women. Central to this liberation is a recognition of
the value of the activities traditionally associated with women;
childbirth, nurturing, and the whole domestic arena. Some
feminists have criticized ecofeminism for reinforcing oppressive
stereotypes and for its tendency toward essentialism
 Ecofeminism
• In all, ecofeminism emphasises the interdependence of all life, humanity’s
role as part of the earth’s ecosystem, and the non-hierarchical nature of a
system in which all parts affect each other to counteract relationships
dominated by values of control and oppression. As a term, deeply rooted
in women’s experience in patriarchal cultures, ‘Ecofeminism’ encompasses
the suffering of both women and nature from the exploitive industrial
practices of men in their race for, the creation of “wealth” (Shiva, 1988).
Men view both nature and women as property to be controlled and
exploited. This is mainly because of the nurturing attributes that characterize
women and nature, which led the patriarchal world to feminise nature as
“Mother Earth” (Oksala, 2018).
 Ecofeminism
• Women, as a result, feel an interconnectedness and, a mystic
alliance with the natural world and adopt the slogan of “Earth
guardianship” as they undergo a crusade against wasteful
materialism, corporate greed, technology’s arrogance, and
pollution (Snodgrass, 2006). Ecofeminist writers call for an eco-
friendly treatment of the environment and justice and respect for
all creatures, both human and non-human. They also oppose all
forms of oppression, racism, and social and political injustice
against women, children, and colonised people.
 Activity
1. Choose any one of the following literary texts and read it from an ecofeminist
perspective:

a. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

b. Bessie Head’s When Rain Clouds Gather.
c. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.
d. Christie Watson’s Tiny Birds Faraway.
e. Steve Chimombo’s Sister-Sister
f. Helon Habila’s Oil on Water
2. Contemplate the confluence of ecofeminism, gender, sexism and racism in African
Literature.
 Animals in Racialised Discourse
• Slavery, lynching, and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, are
sufferings, among others, of black people who are animalised in
hate and racist language. When the Nazis of German under
Adolf Hitler killed millions of Jews in what is referred to as the
Holocaust, the Jews were called ‘rats.’ In the twenty-first
century, when the Israelis as an occupying force kill thousands of
Palestinians in Gaza in what is described as Genocide in the
simulacra regime of Benjamin Netanyahu; the Israelis call those
they kill ‘human animals’ or ‘beasts.’ The animalised Jews in the
Holocaust and the animalised Palestinians in the Genocide are
not black people. Animals, are thus, metaphors of people you
hate.
 Animals in Racialised Discourse
• Garrard (2004) identifies anthropomorphism and
theriomorphism as constituting key metaphoric constructs
through which animals are represented in culture distinguishing
the two terms as, “theriomorphism is the reverse of
anthropomorphism, and is often used in contexts of national or
racial stereotyping, such as when Nazis depicted Jews as rats”
(141). European colonisers called the colonised people animals.
Western slave owners called their slaves animals, and in
apartheid South Africa, the black people were called animals.
Could this be a projection of our own animality?
 Animals and Being Animalised: Lauren
Beuke’s Zoo City (2010)
• Zoo City is set in an alternate version of the South African city of
Johannesburg, in which people who have committed a crime are
magically attached to an animal familiar – those who receive
such punishment are said to be “animalled.” The novel’s chief
protagonist, Zinzi December, is a former journalist and
recovering from drug addict who was “animalled” to a sloth
after getting her brother killed.
 Animals and Being Animalised: Lauren
Beuke’s Zoo City (2010)
• She lives in the Johannesburg suburb of Hillbrow, which is
nicknamed “Zoo City” in the novel for its large population of
animalled people, refugees, and the dispossessed. Zinzi is
attempting to repay the financial debt she owes her drug dealer
by charging people for her special skill of finding lost objects, as
well as making use of her writing abilities by drafting 419 fraud
emails. The novel’s plot focuses on Zinzi’s attempts to find the
missing female member of a brother-and-sister pop duo for a
music producer, in return for the money she needs to fully repay
her dealer.
 Zoo City: Plot Summary
• In the world of the novel, a strange plague in the 1980s leads to
the rise of a phenomenon known as “animalling.” Anyone guilty
of a grave crime suddenly finds themselves partnered with an
animal familiar and possessed of some strange talent. The
animals are connected somehow to their owners, who suffer
pain and weakness if separated from the animal. Worse, if the
animal dies the owner is literally dragged into the abyss by a
dark cloud known as the undertow.
• In between the chapters that tell Zinzi’s story we get background
on the animal plague it has had on society, culture, and the
criminal justice system. Zinzi’s animal is a sloth and her ability is
finding lost objects.
 Zoo City: Plot Summary
• She is seeking out an existence writing 419 scam emails and
dating her boyfriend Benoit who works as a security guard and
has an animal of his own, a mongoose. Zinzi is on a job finding
something for a client when the client is murdered, leaving her
without the money from the case and as the prime suspect by
the police. Outside of the crime scene, she is approached by two
strangers calling themselves Marabou & Maltese, after their
animals, who try to hire her to find a missing person. Zinzi
refuses, saying she does not do people since they are too
complicated and painful.
 Zoo City: Plot Summary
• Benoit, who is a refuge from a war zone, finds out that his wife
and child whom he thought dead are still alive. He tells Zinzi he
is going to have to figure out how to go find them, she is not
thrilled by these revelations but continues seeing him while he is
sorting this out. With the money from her last job, gone Zinzi
calls Marabou and Maltese and tells then she will meet with their
client about his missing person. The client turns out to be Odi
Huron, a famously reclusive music producer who had a string of
hits, disappeared for a while, and has recently made a comeback
with a pop duo called IJusi composed of twin brother and sister
S'bu and Songweza.
 Zoo City: Plot Summary
• Songweza, known as Song, has been missing for several days and
Odi does not know if she has been taken or left on her own, but
here’s a record launch coming up in three weeks and Huron
wants to avoid a scandal so he cannot call the police. Zinzi
agrees to take the case and starts by talking to Song’s brother
S’bu, who claims to have no idea where she is or why. Zinzi
learns about the kids; they were part of a talent contest and
launched to fame after their parents both died. She talks to their
young friends and finds out that Song might have been dating
someone.
 Zoo City: Plot Summary
• Zinzi contacts her old magazine connections to dig further,
pretending it is for a comeback piece and that she is getting back
into the business. Her old boyfriend who works for the magazine is
delighted and helps her out. Zinzi goes to a rehab clinic Song
stayed at and finds out more about the boyfriend plus some other
leads. Gio discovers she is not writing a story after all and expresses
frustration but asks her to write one anyway and he will publish it.
•
 Zoo City: Plot Summary
• While investigating a lead Zinzi gets mugged by a gang that threatens to kill
her and take her sloth to use in a form of magic called ‘muti’, they claim to
have done so with other animals and she barely escapes from them. The
information she gets at the rehab clinic leads her to a bouncer named
Ronaldo who helped Song in the past. She gets his address and finds Son
hiding in the same apartment building. Song claims to be fine and just
wants to be left alone, she swears that someone is out to kill her. Before
Zinzi can hear much more Marabu and Maltese show up and drag Song off
explaining that she stopped taking her medication when she left and is
unbalanced.
 Zoo City: Plot Summary
• Uncertain Zinzi looks into the case further, visiting Song again
and finding her heavily medicated. She notices a pattern of
people close to Song having gone missing including Ronaldo. She
gets her money for finding Song and pays her drug dealer off.
Impulsively she also emails back all the current scams she has
going telling them it is a con. She starts seeing the connections
between her case and some other missing people and murders,
plus some strange fractured emails she has been receiving. She
looks into it further and discovers that at least some of the
victims were animalled, but the animals are missing. She realizes
the point of the murders was the animals, not the people.
 Zoo City: Plot Summary
• She comes home one night to find her drug dealer there, the
money she used to pay him was counterfeit. She also finds a
knife that she does not recognise sitting on her counter, then she
hears sirens outside and she realises she is being set up. She tells
the drug dealer who agrees they should go their separate ways,
though her debt to him is not tripled. As she flees, she receives a
panicked call from one of Song’s friends saying they are coming
for him. She gets Benoit to pick her up and use his guard uniform
to help her sneak into Odi’s place. She finds Maltese there
waiting and he admits she has been set up for all of the
animalled murders and a couple of others that are about to take
place.
 Zoo City: Plot Summary
• Zinzi sees something in Odi’s big outdoor pool and realises it is
his animal, an albino crocodile. Odi disappeared for those years
because he had killed someone and he has been hiding this fact
ever since. Maltese and Benoit struggle and Benoit falls into the
water, Zinzi dives after him and manages to rescue him from the
crocodile who has grabbed and dragged him down through a
tunnel that leads to an underground grotto. She drags Benoit to
shore and sees that Odi and Marabou are there with the twins,
who are drugged and handcuffed. She also sees several animals
that she recognizes from earlier victims.
 Zoo City: Plot Summary
• Zinzi is hidden behind some rocks and witnesses what she realises
is a magic ritual. Marabou and Odi discuss the power of twins,
and then they kill the animals, performing some sort of binding
spell as they do. Done, they unshackle the twins giving them
each a knife. Odi tells them it is like a harmless videogame and
they should fight each other. In a drug haze, S’bu does so, killing
Song. The undertow comes and Odi forces S’bu to declare that
he accepts the crocodile as his own animal. In this way it is
ownership is transferred from Odi to the boy, leaving Odi free
for the first time in twenty years. Satisfied he tells Marabou to
kill S’bu.
 Zoo City: Plot Summary
• After they leave Zinzi takes a risk and approaches the crocodile.
She tells it that they will kill it and use it is parts for magic. The
animal seems to understand and swims up to the surface again,
where it manages to grab and kill Odi. They can hear sirens
outside and Marabou and Maltese flee the scene, Zinzi following
soon after. The novel ends with Zinzi driving out of the city with
her sloth and the bag of counterfeit money. The police are still
after her, but she has decided for once to do something good
and unselfish, she has a photo of Benoit’s family and will use her
ability to track them down for him.
 Animalling
• Being animalled is described in the novel as an automatic consequence –
not just in South Africa, but for all humans worldwide – of bearing a
significant amount of guilt. The distinction between moral and legal
culpability is unclear, as is the threshold which triggers animalling; however,
being responsible for the death of another human is a definite trigger. Every
animal gives its “owner” a different psychic power; however, the owner
must stay close to the animal at all times, or be subject to debilitating panic
attacks, nausea, and other withdrawal symptoms. The animals are not
limited by the normal lifespans of their species, but can die by violence;
should the animal die, the owner will be torn to shreds by a mysterious
dark cloud called the Undertow within minutes.
 Discussion
1. What role do animals play in Zoo City? Are Sloth, the Mongoose, and
other mashavi animal familiars a metaphor for something? If so, what?
2. Because of Sloth, others view Zinzi as a criminal. Are they right in their
assessment? Is Zinzi an honourable or dishonourable person? Does Sloth
hinder or help her to do what is right?
3. How do animalled celebrities influence people’s view of mashavi in
general?
 Discussion
5. How do these celebrities, and the fame they attain, cause
others to culturally appropriate the mashavi?
6. Why does Dave believe Zinzi should write about her own life
as a mashavi rather than about pop culture?
 Zoo City: ‘the animalled zoos’
• This is an urban fantasy novel premised on the guilty conscience
of criminals that can materialise into familiars provided they
accept guilt (the Undertow is the terrifying alternative, also the
ultimate destiny)
• Unclear whether the Zoo Plague or “AAF or Acquired
Aposymbiotic Familiarism” (79) is supernatural
• The familiars, real animals that accompany the repentant
criminal for life, grant a magical power (reward for processing
guilt)
• Discrimination and ghettoisation of the ‘animalled zoos’
(recalling Apartheid)
 Zoo City: ‘the animalled zoos’
• Zoo City is a quite accomplished urban fantasy novel, based on
the premise that the guilty conscience of criminals can materialize
into familiars, provided they accept their guilt (a descent into the
Undertow, a kind of hell, is the terrifying alternative, and also
their ultimate destiny).
• It is unclear whether the Zoo Plague or “AAF or Acquired
Aposymbiotic Familiarism” (79) is supernatural.
• The familiars, real animals that accompany the repentant
criminal for life, are not quite the ordinary creatures they appear
to be, as they also grant their host a magical power as a sort of
reward for their processing of guilt.
 Zoo City: ‘the animalled zoos’
• This externalisation of guilt, however, results in the
discrimination and ghettoisation of the individuals dubbed
‘animalled zoos’ in a way that inevitably recalls Apartheid
• Zoo City is a Science Fiction novel that features a character by
the name of Zinzi December, who is both a businesswoman and
a scammer. The story takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa,
where major criminals find themselves attached to animals who
grant them magical powers. Zinzi’s animal is a sloth, and she uses
her abilities to find lost things. The novel’s mystery is thus
centered around Zinzi finding a client's ring, going to deliver the
ring, and finding her client has been murdered.
 Demons and patronuses: a positive
alliance
• Daemon: Soul in animal shape linked forever to their human companion
(Lyra Belacqua in Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials)
• Patronus: protective totemic animal from a hard-to-master spell (J.K.
Rowling’s Harry Potter series)
• Beukes’ premise also connects with the presence of daemons and patronuses
in British fantasy fiction
• Beukes refers specifically in Zoo City to Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark
Materials, in which human souls take the shape of animals whose qualities
are similar to their own.
• Likewise, in Harry Potter advanced magic allows wizards and witches to
cast the spell which generates a patronus, a totemic magic animal that
materialises for their protection
 A constant reminder of guilt

• Impossible to conceal one’s own animal: crime cannot really be

atoned for
• Hosts ghettoised into Zoo City
• The ‘animalled zoos’ form a whole sub-class.
• “A personalized scarlet letter”: Morality replaces race as the grounds
for social Apartheid (need for scapegoating the ‘other’).
• The ‘animalling’ of criminals affects the whole world: first publicised
case Afghanistan warlord, 2001?; first actual case Australian bank
robber, 1986
• Animalling includes white people: the main villain is a rich white man,
hiding his monstrous animal other.
 A constant reminder of guilt
• In Beukes’ novel, though, the presence of the familiar animal is
far less positive.
• It is impossible to conceal one’s own animal, and hence guilt, as
separation is painful for both human and familiar.
• Crime, actually, cannot be really atoned for as the animals stay
on with their human host seemingly for life, even after prison
sentences have been served.
• The visibility of guilt pushes the hosts to lead ghettoised lives in
Zoo City, where the ‘animalled zoos’ form a whole social sub-
class.
 A constant reminder of guilt
• This produces a ‘Scarlet letter effect’: Morality replaces race as
the grounds for social Apartheid (the need for scapegoating the
‘other’ is given a most potent, visible excuse).
• The ‘animalling’ of criminals affects the whole world. The first
widely publicised case is a Taliban warlord in Afghanistan,
around the year 2000 (the novel is set in 2011). The earliest
recorded case is that of an Australian bank robber in 1986.
• Animalling includes white people and, indeed, Beukes’ main
villain is a rich white man, hiding his monstrous animal other in
his mansion
 In sum …
• Zoo City is a science fiction novel that features a character by the
name of Zinzi December, who is both a businesswoman and a
scammer. The story takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa,
where major criminals find themselves attached to animals who
grant them magical powers. Zinzi’s animal is a sloth, and she uses
her abilities to find lost things. The novel’s mystery is thus
centred around Zinzi finding a client’s ring, going to deliver the
ring, and finding her client has been murdered.
 The Environment in Zakes Mda’s The
Heart of Redness
• In The Heart of Redness, Zakes Mda has confirmed his position as the
foremost black novelist of the post-apartheid or ‘transition’ period. The title
of the novel recalls Joseph Conrad’s classic short novel Heart of Darkness,
which has for almost a century been a focus of controversy about how
Africans are represented in Western literature. Mda’s themes continue this
‘dialogue’ about Western representations of Africans in history and fiction.
The Heart of Redness is one of Zakes Mda’s significant novels of South
African contemporary literary production, which explores the
interconnection between the present and past. Dealing with issues related
to environmental and human rights, sustainability, and exploitation, the
plot of the novel is built on two different temporary levels, demonstrating
that historical events remain relevant to reflect on many current issues.
 The Environment in Zakes Mda’s The
Heart of Redness
• Ecocriticism has distinguished itself, debates notwithstanding, first
by the ethical stand it takes, its commitment to the natural world
as an important thing rather than simply as an object of thematic
study, and, secondly, by its commitment to making connections.
Ecocriticism may be many other things besides, but it is always at
least these two. (Estok 2001: 220). Feminism, Marxism,
poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, and historicism draw heavily
on other theories that preceded them. Such borrowing, however,
is exactly what goes on in the articulation of a new critical
practice [of ecocriticism] (Estok 2001: 224).
 The Environment in Zakes Mda’s The
Heart of Redness
• How can postcolonial, Global South, African, and South African
perspectives work in synergy with ecocritical studies? What role
do race and geography play? What are the peculiarities of an
ecocriticism specifically focused on South Africa? Is its
representation unique, or is it part of the larger postcolonial
project of the Global North? Ecocriticism in South Africa is a
minor, however important phenomenon (Barker 2010: 11). In
1992 an important conference named “Literature, Nature and
the Land: Ethics and Aesthetics of the Environment” introduced
ecocriticism to the academy concretely for the first time.
 The Environment in Zakes Mda’s The
Heart of Redness
• The culture of environmentalism in South Africa has kept changing throughout the decade,
affected by South Africa’s shift to democratic government. Environmentalism through the
apartheid preserved the same interest in conservation of the colonialist era. Along with the
political shift, a link between the environment and society has emerged from a more
“people-centred” tendency (Vital, 2015: 297). This cultural transformation has brought the
development of a postcolonial knowledge of ecology. This new perspective merges the
persistent influence of colonialism and the current position of South Africa, situated now in
a context dominated by the global North.
•
Historical Context and Cultural Landscape
of Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness
• In the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa, there is an area of
great naturalistic beauty, known as Wild Coast because it is
mostly still unspoiled. The area is full of natural reserves,
established to protect the varied local flora and fauna. The Wild
Coast covers the area from East London to Port Edward. Before
1994 the area east of the Great Kei River was declared a
Bantustan by the white National Party administration, that is to
say, a formally independent territory kept separate for the black
citizens of South Africa, where the Xhosa people could live
separately.
Historical Context and Cultural Landscape
of Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness
• One of the purposes of apartheid was to hold together the members of a
specific ethnic group, to ensure that the territories were ethnically uniform.
In 1976 the territory was renamed the Republic of Transkei, and until the
transition to democracy in 1994 the area has remained underdeveloped,
internationally unrecognised, and characterised by serious social and
political conflicts. Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda (known as Zakes Mda)
has dedicated his literary career to social and political commitment,
engaging artistically in the socio-political struggles experienced in pre- and
post-apartheid South Africa. He is one of the most significant South African
writers: in the period between the 1970s and 1980s, he devoted his interest
mainly to the theatre, using his plays as a vehicle to offer the public dramas
of protest and cultural critique (Bogue 2010: 49).
Historical Context and Cultural Landscape
of Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness
• The fall of apartheid and the advent of the first black
government elected democratically have inspired many of Zakes
Mda’s novels, including The Heart of Redness, his third novel
published in 2000, allowing him to focus on the themes of
oppression and exploitation resulting from colonialism and
apartheid. By the use of his novels, he reports what he feels
about the society and government, from the transition to
democracy and the political campaigns in 1994 to 1990-2000,
when the process of ending apartheid officially started (Lloyd
2001: 34).
 Historical Context and Cultural Landscape
of Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness
• The Heart of Redness is set in the present-day Wild Coast, in a coastal
village called Qolorha-by-Sea, a few kilometres east of the mouth of river
Kei. The small rural village is part of the areas traditionally inhabited by the
Xhosa. Zakes Mda himself is a Xhosa: now he lives between South Africa
and the USA, where he teaches creative writing at Ohio State University,
but he was born in Herschel, a small rural town on the northeastern border
of the Eastern Cape Province. The novel is set in the in the years in which
Mda writes, around the turn of the century. However, the timeline is more
complicated than that, and it affects the structure of the novel itself. The
narrative switches from the depiction of a contemporary Xhosa village to
fragmented time jumps in a past that dates back to the mid-nineteenth
century.
Historical Context and Cultural Landscape
of Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness
• The place remains the same throughout the narrative because it is precisely
there that in 1856 a prophecy that would have a huge impact on the Xhosa
is made. Mda resorts to magical realism to connect the traditional elements
and the sufferings of the poor with the present global culture, characterized
by venality and materialism. Magical realism is defined by Cooper as “the
fictional device of the supernatural, not only from any source the writer
chooses, syncretized with a developed realistic, historical perspective”
(Cooper, 1998: 16). In this respect, Mda comments: Some critics have called
my work magic realism… I wrote in this manner because I am a product of
this culture, in my culture, the magical is not disconcerting. It is taken for
granted… A lot of my work is set in the rural areas because they retain that
magic, whereas the urban areas have lost it to Westernisation (Mda 1997:
281).
Historical Context and Cultural Landscape
of Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness
• In The Heart of Redness, Mda deals with the opposition between the rural areas in which
the current influence of Westernisation challenges the traditional beliefs and the past, when
traditions and beliefs were prominent within the community, but still contested by
imperialism and the Great Cattle Killing, two of the most important historical events for
the Xhosa. The Heart of Redness analyses the conflict of values in the present by aligning
two distinct narrative threads: one follows the events that occurred four years from the
first democratic elections in South Africa, while the other narrates the “Cattle-Killing
Movement”, dating back to 1856-1857 and exploring the first contacts between the British
colonizers and the Xhosa. Mda retrieves the earlier episode set up in the visions of the
young prophetess Nongqawuse and brings it to the contemporary debate arising from
economic and social issues of development, originated by the proposal to realise a touristic
project in the village of Quolorha. Mda succeeds in articulating the challenges and
complicated elements that distinguish the culture and society of past and present South
Africa.
Historical Context and Cultural Landscape
of Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness
• Mda enhances the image of Qolorha and the character of
Nongqawuse, transforming them into a touristic attraction that
can potentially help the local population to develop sustainably
and freeing them from the bad association with one of the most
tragic events in the history of the Xhosa people. Through the aid
of his protagonist, Mda saves Qolorha from the danger of mass
tourism, restores the importance of the prophetess Nongqawuse
as a significant element of the history of the Xhosa people, and
highlights how important models of alternative development.
 Between Nature and Culture
• One of the most interesting extensions of ecocriticism is the approach of
cultural ecology, defined by Zapf as a theory that “posits ecology as a
paradigmatic perspective of knowledge not only for the natural sciences but
for cultural studies as well” (Zapf 2016: 136). Different cultures determine
the way people interact with nature, other forms of life, and the physical
environment around them: cultural ecology regards culture as a sphere that
is interdependent with nature and ecology, although it acknowledges the
peculiarities and different dynamics of the two worlds. The narrative of The
Heart of Redness revolves around a series of binary oppositions, between
past and present, tradition and progress, foreign and familiar, faith and
unbelief, nature and culture, but the boundary line is almost always blurred.
 Between Nature and Culture
• Many passages evoke an idyllic picture of amaXhosa society before the
colonial encroachment of their lands as pristine and untouched,
uncontaminated by outside invasions, but the conservation measures
eventually adopted for the environment give space to an open ending, in
which we are not sure about their future effectiveness. To deal with the
nature-culture binomial, Mda investigates the tension that has always
existed between modernity and tradition from a South African perspective.
Mda revisits and contextualizes the concepts of progress and civilization,
speaking out against the potentially disastrous implications that the chasing
of the Western myth could bring, undermining the opportunity of pursuing
a peaceful coexistence on our planet, respecting each other and the
environment. Even though the race toward progress and transformation is
unstoppable, it shall not authorise us to make choices unintelligently,
carelessly, and unwisely.
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness carries the post-humanist vision of inclusion and
dismantles the notion of human hegemony. Mda exposes hegemonic powers that
often disavow the nonhuman species. He also articulates the animalisation of
humans through which he draws attention to the exclusion and exploitation of
animals. Thus, Mda in The Heart of Redness engages the animals directly. By
reimagining animals as subjects and the protagonists of his oeuvres, by emphasising
their peculiarity as nonhuman humans and their interconnection with humans, and
by also portraying the conflict of exclusion of nonhuman animals, Mda revises the
place of the animals, challenging the speciesist notions that foreground their
exclusion. Speciesist notions, according to Thomas Lamarre, comprise violence to
nonhuman animals and animalised humans; it is ‘blatant discrimination against
animals, which comes of attributing ‘bestial,’ that is, negative characteristics to
nonhuman animals and extending these negative attributes to humans’ (76).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Mda speaks against human and animal discrimination from a post-
humanist point of view, locates and recognises the animal, and argues
for openness from the closures and ‘enframings’ that exclude
nonhuman animals. Thus, Mda interrogates human status: ‘the concept
of “the human” that the human falsely “gives to itself” to then enable
its recognition from a safe ontological distance, of the nonhuman other
in a gesture of self-flattering “benevolence” wholly characteristic’ of
human(ity) (Wolfe 2010, 118).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Mda’s rethinks “the hierarchy of human/ animal” (Wolfe 2010:118).
He carefully chooses both human and nonhuman animal characters,
what Wolfe describes as a ‘distribution of subjectivity across species
lines’ (Wolfe 2010, 125), that is, a rethinking of subjectivity from a
non-hierarchical and non-anthropocentric way that neither favours
nor elevates humans. The tenacity and commitment with which Mda
explores the nonhuman undermine the assertion of Philip Armstrong
(2002) that African creative writers do not pursue the subject of
animals with vigour because it, ‘risks trivialising the suffering of
human beings under colonialism’ (413). This makes The Heart of
Redness an important work and a post-humanist manifesto in
postcolonial African literature.
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• While Cajetan Iheka (2018) acknowledges the need for the recognition of nonhuman
forms like plants and the affinity and interconnection between humans and nonhuman
animals, he reads “nonhuman (animals) as symbols for oppressed humans in African
literary criticism” (3). In his essay that focused on racism and environmental justice in the
face of neoliberal environmental exploitation/interventions, Byron Caminero-Santangelo
(2014) sees the subject of animals as the core of The Heart of Redness. To borrow the
words of Evan Mwangi (2019), The Heart of Redness “views animals as representing their
own need for recognition and rights as sentient beings” (1). Instead of this position, Wolfe
argues that literature and literary studies have an important role to play in confronting
certain speciesist modes of thinking towards the animal and how language and analysis rely
on cognitive science in denying the animals cognition (the occlusion cognitive science seeks
to overcome) (Wolfe 2010, 116). On Mda’s cognition of the non-human, Astrid Feldbrügge
(2010) notes that he confronts the dichotomy between the indigenous people and the
nonhuman world and challenges hierarchical structures and notions that privilege the
human world above the non-human (151).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Frantz Fanon (1963) observes that “The native is declared insensible
to ethics; he represents not only the absence of value but also the
negation of values” (141). The natives are also described in zoological
terms and references made ‘to the slithery movements of the yellow
race, the odours from the “native” quarters to the hordes, the stink,
the swarming, the seething, and the gesticulations. In his endeavours
in description and finding the right word, the colonist refers
constantly to the bestiary’ (Fanon 7). Africans were seen as uncultured
savages and this is demonstrated in the declaration of Sir George
Grey, a colonial governor in The Heart of Redness, “They the natives
will give up their barbaric culture and heathen habits, and when they
take over their chiefdoms [that] they will be good chiefs” (Mda 127).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• This motif of animalisation is seen throughout the novel and serves as the
conflict both in the colonial (between the colonists and natives) and
postcolonial (between the believers and unbelievers of amaXhosa) South
Africa where colonialists ripped Africans of their humanity and left a legacy
that African culture is debased and thus its adherents barbaric and
subhuman. Colonial civilisation/culture contends with the culture of
amaXhosa and tries to animalize the people. This conflict is portrayed in a
parallel story of the amaXhosa people during colonialism and
contemporary times. Mda’s style in fusing the historical and contemporary
South African experience is to make visible the extent of the colonial
experience and its impact even after the end of apartheid.
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• By recreating the conflict during the cattle-killing of colonial
times in the contemporary amaXhosa using the descendants of
the major characters of the colonial period, Mda shows that the
negative colonial impact and legacy cuts across generations and
can be seen in the light of Nixon’s notion of slow violence. By
this, he means “violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a
violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and
space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as
violence at all” (Nixon 22).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• In the novel, the colonial aggressiveness and their notion that
Africans are subhuman or children that need to be tamed is first
revealed through the disposition of a colonialist, the self-
acclaimed Great White Chief of the Xhosas, Sir Harry Smith, who
sees the Xhosas as his children and himself as their father. Sir
Harry Smith infantilizes the Xhosas people and calls them
animals while calling for their extermination during a war with
them: ‘I loved these people and considered them my children.
But now I say exterminate the savage beasts!’ (Mda 20). He
forces all the kings and chiefs of the amaXhosa people to kiss his
boot in a ceremony-like ritual in recognition of his superiority as
a higher human species from a more human race (Mda 19).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Given such an attitude, Val Plumwood (2001) argues, that ‘the
colonial conception of humanity depended on the not-human’ (52).
This sensibility is what Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin (2007)
describe as enframing the other as “the uncivilized, the animal and
animalistic” (5).
• The very notion of Sir Harry Smith/European colonialists’ abrogation
of superiority and hegemony is speciesist, and predicated on the
enframed perception that sees ‘indigenous cultures as “primitive”, less
rational, and closer to children, animals and nature’ (Plumwood 53).
Such a speciesist orientation is inculcated in the natives, the
contemporary unbelievers of the amaXhosa as they have imbibed the
animalization of anything African.
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Mda is critical of the colonialists’ animalisation of Africans, what Grant
Farred (2007) describes as “the misrepresentation of the ‘native’ as
uncivilised, or ‘red’, in the iconography of Mda’s novel, and therefore less
than human – the very incarnation of the Conradian Other” (111). Camagu
laments in the novel: “They were taught by the missionaries that it is a sign
of civilization, of ubugqobhoka, to despise isikhakha as the clothing of the
amaqaba – those who have not seen the light and who still smear
themselves with red ochre” (Mda 61). By identifying themselves with
African culture, they are automatically denigrated as barbarians who have
yet to encounter the ‘superiority’ of Western culture and the so-called
civilisation. Thus, Bhonco, the head of the contemporary unbelievers’ cult,
describes his amaXhosa culture as darkness: “They want us to remain in our
wildness! (…) To remain red, all our lives! To stay in the darkness of
redness!” (Mda 279).
 Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Therefore, to prove his embrace of Western civilisation Bhonco decides that “he
will only be seen in suits” (Mda 79). Farred observes that “by reiterating so
vehemently their support for ‘civilisation’, by trying to escape the ‘heart of
redness,’ the Unbelievers inadvertently give credence to the colonialists’
representation of them” (111).
• In an ironic twist, Mda reveals the white colonialist engaging in barbaric acts to
the nausea of their African onlookers “Then, to the horror of the men watching,
the soldiers cut off the dead man’s head and put it in a pot of boiling water”
(21).
• The Africans are confounded when they witness the anticlimax of the so-called
civility of the British soldiers led by John Dalton. Mda reveals the irony beyond
the European appropriation of superiority over Africans when John Dalton
declares to Twin, who accused them of cannibalism when they saw the British
soldiers cooking the severed head in a pot, that: “We are civilised men, we
don’t eat people” (Mda 21).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• For John Dalton, Africans lack the basic qualities of humans and can only
qualify as souvenirs and specimens. John Dalton confidently informs the
Twin, “These Heads are either going to be souvenirs or will be used for
scientific inquiry” (Mda 21). For the colonists, colonial subjects are
dispensable specimens. Mda through this scene reminds the reader that
most times, science relies on the exploitation and sacrifice of the animalized
‘other’.
• Sir George Cathcart, another colonial governor sent to replace Sir Harry
Smith after he was defeated in the war with the African natives, continued
the extermination policy of his predecessor. The war is caused by the
usurpation of the African traditional institutions and the forceful
appropriation of natives’ lands by the British, who are also bent on
forcefully subjecting Africans to their colonial rule, which leads to an almost
extermination of the natives.
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Sir George Cathcart adopts a policy of starvation to force the
Africans into submission as the war continues “If he could not
defeat the amaXhosa people in the field of battle, he was going
to starve them into submission” (Mda 25). Another vivid
example of the colonialists’ animalization or dehumanization of
the colonized is seen in the brutality of a colonial governor, Sir
Benjamin D’Urban, who according to the novel, murdered King
Hintsa, a beloved king of the amaXhosa people. Mda writes that
“They have not forgotten how D’Urban had invited the King to
a meeting, promising him that he would be safe, only to cut off
his ears as souvenirs and ship his head to Britain” (86).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• By this story of King Hintsa, which is similar to the fate the
headless ancestor Xikixa encounters, Mda through a repetition of
the dismembering of Africans reinforces the claim that the
colonists view Africans as specimens or subhuman that invite
scientific inquiry. In place of this, Ana-Maria Ştefan (2013) notes
“the whole burden of Western anxiety and prejudice against the
African alter, most often perceived as an inferior alien” (17).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• The last colonial governor of what post-Apartheid became the
amaXhosa community pursued a policy of starvation and the
appropriation of natives’ land through subtle but excruciating
means. As Mda narrates “He had arrived with great enthusiasm
with a mission to civilize the natives (…) Of course he had to
take their land in return for civilization. Civilisation is not cheap”
(95). Mda through euphemism ridicules and criticises colonialism
and exposes the exploitation, mercantilism, and consumerism
that sit at the core of all colonial projects. By stripping Africans
of their land, calling them subhuman, and their culture debased,
the governor is portrayed as a speciesist who is carrying out
‘colonialism’s project of Othering – denigrating, exploiting,
enslaving – indigenous communities’ (Farred 111).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Like his predecessors, Sir George Grey does not believe the native is equal to
the white colonialist; there is equality of all humankind for George Grey
only when they abandon their cultural identity and perspective, embrace
British culture, and pay for such civilisation with their lands. Mda tells us
that “Grey believed that all men were equal – well, almost equal – as long
as they adopted a civilised mode of dress and decent British habits” (96).
• A critical reading of The Heart of Redness may raise the suspicion of the
reader over the role of the colonialists in inventing the cattle-killing crisis in
the novel. Mda portrays the cattle-killing of 1856–7 as a colonial invention
and strategy that aimed to “destroy the political independence of the Xhosa
[…] to make their land and labour available to the white settlers, and to
reshape their religious and cultural institutions on European and Christian
models” (Peires 1989, 312; 313).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• An inquiry into the rise of the Nongqawuse and Nombanda prophesies and
the evaluation of the prophecies reveals the influence of colonial Christian
mythologies as contained in the bible. The girls’ prophecies seem to also
imitate the previous prophecy of Mlanjeni, a native prophet, who
previously “ordered that all dun and yellow cattle be slaughtered, for they
were an abomination” (Mda 19). The fact that Mhlakaza, who was
formerly a devout Christian and a follower of the colonialist, is related to
the girls and is the one who discovered the girls’ prophecies, may raise
suspicion of the colonialists’ complicity in the invention of the girls’
prophecy; the amaXhosa people, being a religious community and a
community of prophets made them very vulnerable. In an informed
evaluation of religion and how it institutes hierarchy and shapes human
experiences, Farred writes “Because of its declared adherence to the
multitudinous, observant One (say, God, g-d, or Allah) as the apex of the
hierarchy, the theocratic cannot function as anything but the space of
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• It is here where transcendentally derived or socially-authored
hierarchies order existence, where those hierarchies are most
strictly enforced” (102).
• Any interpretation that Sir George Grey, an experienced colonial
governor, uses this valuable experience to penetrate the religious
amaXhosa people has a lot of credibility as this is further proved
by his attitude during the great famine that accompanied the cattle
killings (Mda 236–8).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Mda writes how the famine is used to turn the natives into
labourers and slaves, and in very clear terms reveals the
colonialists’ complicity in the cattle-killing crisis ‘“We are
achieving what we set out to do,” he benevolently told his
magistrates. “(…) these people are not irreclaimable savages”’
(296).
• The Cattle Killing Movement, which resulted in famine, created
an opportunity that the colonists leveraged to weaken the
natives’ resistance to colonial encroachment and the
appropriation of their native land. Twin-Twin sees the colonists’
complicity in the whole crisis:
 Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• “Twin-twin heard how thousands of his people had died as a
result of the cattle-killing movement […]. He saw with his own
eyes white settlements spreading over the lands of his people.
He was filled with bitterness and his scars went wild […]. ‘We
have been cheated,’ he told Nxito. ‘These people through whose
ears the sun shines are spreading like a plague in kwaXhosa’
‘[…]. It must be true that The Man Who Named Ten Rivers
planned all this cattle-killing business,’ said Twin-Twin. ‘He is the
one who planted these ideas in the mind of Nongqawuse. He
wanted the amaXhosa people to defeat themselves. Now he is
enjoying the spoils of victory without having lifted a finger’”
(298).
 Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Land has always been at the centre of colonial exploitation. In order to exploit
the natives, the colonists frame a difference by terming the natives subhuman and
savages in need of civilisation. The word ‘enframing’ in this context means an
artificial creation and invention that provides the justification for colonial
mercantilism, consumerism, and the exploitation of the natives and the
appropriation of their lands. For this purpose, the colonialist violently destroys the
natives and their culture.
• The colonial speciesist project in the dehumanisation of the natives and
subsequently their exploitation is what Mda seeks to dramatise and relive. As
Maria Renata Dolce (2016) avers “Mda’s literary writing thus manifests its
transformative potential and establishes itself as a site for the reinvention and
reintegration of a wounded community dis-membered by colonisation, which did
not limit itself to acts of destruction and appropriation, but deprived the
oppressed of their past, their memories, their histories, their voice” (62).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Beyond the natives, Mda’s The Heart of Redness also focuses on
the issue of animals and their place as the sacrificial ‘other’ for
humans. In the middle of the conflict between the believers and
unbelievers is the issue of animal sacrifice for human existence
(for the preservation of the amaXhosa people). While the
believers insist on the sacrifice of all their animals to save them
from colonial peril and the lung sickness that has attacked their
animals in exchange for new animals and the resurrection of
their ancestors, the unbelievers distrust and do not believe this
prophecy
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• The unbelievers are more practical, insisting that the sacrifice of
all their animals is counter-productive. Farred notes very
importantly that: ‘The notion of sacrifice is, in this way,
constitutive of both “faiths”: the “Believers” and the
“Unbelievers” recognise the importance of the transactional
nature of faith, the need to sacrifice something in order to
receive in return or to achieve something greater, more
transcendent than their current condition’ (104). Thus, for the
natives, animals are the usable ‘other’, the way the colonists
perceive the natives; the ‘other’ here in the transactional sense
constitutes subjects (objects) that can be used for exchange
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Mda (2000) challenges anthropocentrism, the notion that puts
humans at the centre of the universe and places them above every
other existence. Like Jacques Derrida, Mda recognises that “The
animal is a word; it’s an appellation that men have instituted, a name
they have given themselves right and the authority to give to another
living creature” (392). He imagines animals as the subject of the novel
and not as objects which is contrary to the perception of subjectivity
as the only reserve of humans. Wolfe’s view on humanness is that “it
is true that what we think of as personhood, knowledge, and so on is
inseparable from who ‘we’ are, from our culture, discourses, and
disciplines; but at the same time, we are not we; we are not that
‘auto- of autobiography that humanism ‘gives to itself”’ (Wolfe 2010,
119).
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• Mda’s re-ordering of the place of animals in the novel from object to
subject resonates with Wolfe’s praxis of animals as subjects of injustice: ‘to
rethink the hierarchy of human/animal, as animals remain excluded (as
anything but, presumably, derivative or “indirect” subjects of justice) from
the liberal “conversation” about political ends to which philosophy clearly,
subordinated’ (Wolfe 2010, 124). In the novel, the Cattle Killing Movement
is a transactional act that ought to bring succour to the amaXhosa people
from the colonists’ exploitation and extermination. The first time there is
cattle killing, it is ordered by Mlanjeni “that all dun and yellow cattle be
slaughtered, for they were an abomination” (Mda 19). This will help the
amaXhosa win the Great War of Mlanjeni. The amaXhosa people lose their
way even with the animal sacrifice. This consumerist approach towards
animals denies animals subjectivity and places them as the sacrificed
alternative for human existence.
Colonialism, Animals, and the Animalised
Other
• This is even more evident in Nongqawuse and Nombanda prophesies
(and all the prophets of that time) where the sacrifice of animals is
seen as the solution to lung sickness imported by British colonists’
cross-border animal husbandry (Mda 55). This revelation also
confirms the complicity of the colonialists in the Cattle Killing
Movement. However, from the quest for human survival rose the
quest for the colonisation of animals. Wolfe contends that “In this
way, we can readily imagine a semiotic square in which ‘human’
means ‘colonising mimetic primate’ and ‘animal’ means ‘colonised
mimetic primate”’ (2003, 187). Jacques Derrida describes it as the
‘sacrificial structure’ (see Derrida 2002). With the development of the
lung-sickness raises the promise of a new quality of life that is
incorruptible and uninfluenced by colonial desecration.
 Ecofeminism and African Literature
• Ecofeminism is a branch of criticism that seeks to analyse and
interpret the relationship between women and nature. It
describes movements and philosophies that link feminism with
ecology. Ecofeminism is interested in the particular and
significant connections between women and nature; it seeks to
interpret their repression and exploitation in terms of the
repression and exploitation of the environment. Eco-feminists
believe that these connections are illustrated through
traditionally “female” values such as reciprocity, nurturing, and
cooperation, which are present both among women and in
nature. Women and nature are also united through their shared
history of oppression by a patriarchal Western society.
 Ecofeminism and African Literature
• Women and nature are closely tied together and their role in society
is predicated on a common goal which is to nurture, reproduce, and
recreate. This is often ignored, neglected, and exploited in a
patriarchal world. Vandana Shiva in her opinion claims that women
have a special connection to the environment through their daily
interactions and this connection has been ignored. She says that
women in subsistence economies who produce “wealth in partnership
with nature, have been experts in their own right of holistic and
ecological knowledge of nature’s processes.” However, she makes the
point that “these alternative modes of knowing, which are oriented
to the social benefits and sustenance needs are not recognised by the
capitalist reductionist paradigm because it fails to perceive the
interconnectedness of nature, or the connection of women’s lives,
work, and knowledge with the creation of wealth” (3).
 Ecofeminism and African Literature
• As Adrian Harris pointed out, ecofeminists agree that the domination
of women and the domination of nature are fundamentally
connected and that environmental efforts are therefore integral with
work to overcome the oppression of women. The primary aims of
eco-feminism are not the same as those typically associated with
liberal feminism. Ecofeminists do not seek equality with men as such
but aim for the liberation of women as women. Central to this
liberation is a recognition of the value of the activities traditionally
associated with women; childbirth, nurturing, and the whole
domestic arena. Some feminists have criticized ecofeminism for
reinforcing oppressive stereotypes and for its tendency toward
essentialism. According to him:
 Ecofeminism and African Literature
• “In Western society, women are treated as inferior to men, ‘nature’ is
treated as inferior to ‘culture’, and humans are understood as being
separate from, and often superior to, the natural environment. Throughout
our history nature is portrayed as feminine and women are often thought
of as closer to nature than men. Women’s physiological connection with
birth and child care has partly led to this close association with nature. The
menstrual cycle, which is linked to the Lunar cycle, is also seen as evidence
of women's closeness to the body and natural rhythms. Our cultural image
of the 'premenstrual woman’ as irrational and overemotional typifies this
association between women, the body, nature, and the irrational.
Ecofeminists focus on these connections and analyses how they devalue and
oppress both ‘women’ and ‘nature’” (10).
 Ecofeminism and African Literature
• In all, ecofeminism emphasises the interdependence of all life,
humanity’s role as part of the earth’s ecosystem, and the non-
hierarchical nature of a system in which all parts affect each
other to counteract relationships dominated by values of control
and oppression. As a term, deeply rooted in women’s experience
in patriarchal cultures, ‘Ecofeminism’ encompasses the suffering
of both women and nature from the exploitive industrial
practices of men in their race for, the creation of “wealth”
(Shiva, 1988). Men view both nature and women as property to
be controlled and exploited. This is mainly because of the
nurturing attributes that characterize women and nature, which
led the patriarchal world to feminise nature as “Mother Earth”
(Oksala, 2018
 Ecofeminism and African Literature
• Women, as a result, feel an interconnectedness and, a mystic
alliance with the natural world and adopt the slogan of “Earth
guardianship” as they undergo a crusade against wasteful
materialism, corporate greed, technology’s arrogance, and
pollution (Snodgrass, 2006). Ecofeminist writers call for an eco-
friendly treatment of the environment and justice and respect for
all creatures, both human and non-human. They also oppose all
forms of oppression, racism, and social and political injustice
against women, children, and colonised people.
Ecofeminism, Gender, Sexism, Racism and
Class
• Ecofeminists believe that male-dominated culture thrives on
sexism, racism, class exploitation, and environmental destruction.

• Exploitation of women and nature is severely protested by the

ecofeminists the world over.

• Ecofeminism calls upon women and men to reconceptualise the

world, in non-hierarchical ways.
Ecofeminism, Gender, Sexism, Racism and
Class
• In this, the feminist movement and the environmental
movement are seen to work together, on the assumption that
they both stand for egalitarian, non-hierarchical systems. Indeed,
the liberation of women and nature is seen as intimately linked.

• In practice, there is enormous evidence historically of women’s

subordinate position.
Ecofeminism, Gender, Sexism, Racism and
Class
These inequalities relate in particular to three aspects:
1. the gender division of labour;
2. property rights, especially in land;
3. juridical authority and access to public decision-making forums

• In the African context, all three types of inequalities continue in the

present period and critically influence where women are placed
concerning institutions for environmental change today.
Ecofeminism, Gender, Sexism, Racism and
Class
• These three elements of gender inequality not only underline in a
substantial degree the noted negative gender effects of environmental
degradation, but they underlie the little attention being given to
women’s concerns even in the emergent village institutions for
environmental protection
• The gender division of labour underlies the increase in women’s time
and energy in fuel and fodder collection. Women’s lack of ownership
in private land critically increases their dependence on common
property resources
• And their marginal representation in public decision-making forums
makes them mostly takers not makers of laws and rules for natural
resources management being framed.
Ecofeminism, Gender, Sexism, Racism and
Class
• Ecofeminists feel that a more promising approach for an ethics of
nature would be to remove the concept of rights from the
central position it currently holds and focus instead on less
dualistic moral concepts such as respect, sympathy, care, concern,
compassion, gratitude, friendship, and responsibility
• Browsing the literature we find ecofeminism variously described
as a political stance, a take-it-to-the-streets movement, a feminist
spiritual affirmation, an inspirational wellspring for women’s
activism, a retrieval of womanist earth wisdom, a feminist
theory, an applied scholarship, a feminist rebellion within radical
environmentalism, an oppositional positionality, a praxis, and a
remapping of women’s relationship to place and ecology.
Ecofeminism, Gender, Sexism, Racism and
Class
• “Ecofeminism” as a term indicates a double political
intervention, of environmentalism into feminism and feminism
into environmentalism, that is as politically important as the
designations ‘socialist feminism’ and ‘black feminism’ were.
Ecofeminism, Gender, Sexism, Racism and
Class
• Most feminists who pursue scholarship and activist work on the
environment share common interests, among them a
commitment to illuminating how gender, class, and race mediate
people’s lived experiences in local environments
• An interest in examining how human – environment perceptions
and values may be mediated through ‘gendered’ lenses and
shaped by gender roles and assumptions; an interest in
examining the gendered nature of constellation of political,
economic and ecological power in institutions that are
instrumental players in the state of the environment;.
Ecofeminism, Gender, Sexism, Racism and
Class
• An interest in exploring the interconnectedness of systems of
oppression and domination. The best of the recent feminist
environmental scholarship engages with and extends
transnational, postcolonial, and poststructuralist deconstructions
and challenges
 Discussion
• Contemplate how problematic is the confluence of ecofeminism
with gender, sexism, and racism in the study of African literature.
 Animals, Animality, and Race in
African Literature
Animals in racialised discourse
• Slavery, lynching, and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, are sufferings,
among others, of black people who are animalised in hate and racist
language.
• When the Nazis of German under Adolf Hitler killed millions of Jews in
what is referred to as the Holocaust, the Jews were called ‘rats.’
• In the twenty-first century, when the Israelis as an occupying force kill
thousands of Palestinians in Gaza in what is described as ‘Genocide’ in the
simulacra regime of Benjamin Netanyahu; the Israelis call those they kill
‘human-animals’ or ‘beasts’
 Animals, Animality, and Race in
African Literature
Animals in racialised discourse
• The animalised Jews in the Holocaust and the animalised
Palestinians in the 21st century ‘Genocide’ are not black people.
• Garrard (2004) identifies anthropomorphism and
theriomorphism as constituting key metaphoric constructs
through which animals are represented in culture distinguishing
the two terms as: “theriomorphism is the reverse of
anthropomorphism, and is often used in contexts of national or
racial stereotyping, such as when Nazis depicted Jews as rats”
(141).
 Animals, Animality, and Race in
African Literature
• European colonisers called the colonised people animals,
Western slave owners called their slaves animals, and in
apartheid South Africa, the black people were called animals.
Could this be a projection of the white people’s own animality?
 Animals in African Literature: NoViolet
Bulawayo’s Glory (2022)
• A long time ago, in a bountiful land not so far away, the animals
lived quite happily. Then the colonisers arrived. After nearly a
hundred years, a bloody War of Liberation brought new hope
for the animals – along with a new leader: a charismatic horse
who commanded the sun and ruled and ruled – and kept on
ruling.
 Animals in African Literature: NoViolet
Bulawayo’s Glory (2022)
• Glory tells the story of a country trapped in a cycle as old as
time. And yet, as it unveils the myriad tricks required to uphold
the illusion of absolute power, it reminds us that the glory of
tyranny only lasts as long as its victims are willing to let it. This
energetic and exhilarating joyride from NoViolet Bulawayo is the
story of an uprising, told by a vivid chorus of animal voices that
help us see our human world more clearly.
 Discussion
• Glory is a magical crossing of the African continent with its
political excesses and its wacky (wild, weird) characters. Here,
the fable is never far from the reality. Glory is a satirical take on
Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup and the fall of Robert Mugabe, which
the author has chosen to narrate through anthropomorphised
animals. Why do you think Bulawayo chose to write the novel
as a fable?
 Discussion
• Aside from its ties to modern Zimbabwean history, the novel is
laced with cultural hot takes. Those last three words we have
heard said over and over by Black American brothers begging
killers for their lives in the simplest, most desperate of prayers –
“I can’t breathe.” (p.206) is a reference to George Floyd’s death
and cries to “make Jidada great again” echo the political rallying
of the Trump campaign. What other devices does the author use
to make this a novel of our times? Does its timeliness make Glory
more compelling?
 Discussion
• Glory draws heavily on George Orwell’s Animal Farm but the author has
leveraged her knowledge of African folklore and oral storytelling, too. Where do
you see these influences intersecting within the novel?

• While the novel has traditional segments that are akin to chapters, its structure
more closely resembles a series of vignettes (monographs, essays), with headings
and subheadings within. Does this guide or inform your reading experience any
more than a traditional narrative structure? How does it serve the story?
 Discussion
• Glory is narrated through a chorus of different voices and can be read
as a polyphonic novel. Does this narrative technique offer a broader
range of perspectives from the collective inhabitants of Jidada?

• The Booker judges said Destiny “is the symbol of young African
women on the continent” and called her “one of the most
unforgettable characters” within the story. Why do you think Destiny
returned after exile? What has instigated her return?
 Discussion
• Jidada operates an oppressive patriarchal system and the females are
routinely treated as second-class citizens. Discuss the parallels between
their treatment in the novel and the world we currently live in. What
countries and communities do you see the author drawing inspiration
from?

• A swarm of red butterflies recurs within the story. What do you think
the butterflies signify, and what do the citizens of Jidada see in them?
 Glory: Plot
• NoViolet Bulawayo’s novel Glory is written from the first-
person, second-person, and third-person points of view.
Bulawayo utilizes both the past and present tenses in the
novel. Glory, which takes place in the fictional African country
of Jidada, allegorises the history of Zimbabwe. The characters in
the novel are all various anthropomorphic animals.
 Glory: Plot
• The Old Horse – the aged, long-serving president of Jidada –
arrives at a rally. Despite the Old Horse’s tyrannical reign, the
assembled Jidadans greet him with excitement. As the Old Horse
commemorates his own role in Jidada’s Liberation War, a group
of female protesters interrupts him. After a speech by Tuvius
Delight Shasha (the vice president), the Old Horse’s ambitious
wife, Dr. Sweet Mother, denounces both the protestors and Tuvy
himself. Her speech goes viral.
 Glory: Plot
• In the subsequent days, Dr. Sweet Mother contemplates her
plans to become Jidada’s next president. A bloc of the Inner
Circle, led by Tuvy, opposes her candidacy because of her
gender, ethnicity, and lack of service in the Liberation War. Tuvy
faces several assassination attempts and turns to his sorcerer,
Jolijo, for counsel. After a brief exile, Tuvy successfully executes a
coup with the help of several generals; they place the Old Horse
and his wife under house arrest. Jidadans take to the streets to
celebrate the fall of the Old Horse and the potential for
freedom, justice, and equality.
 Glory: Plot
• Tuvy – now known as the Saviour of the Nation – announces
that the country will, for the first time, hold democratic
elections. Tuvy campaigns on the idea of a New Dispensation,
under which Jidadans will thrive. He fondly recalls the
Gukurahundi, a genocidal campaign against ethnic minorities and
apparent dissidents that occurred in the aftermath of Jidada’s
independence. He prepares to rig the upcoming elections.
 Glory: Plot
• A goat named Destiny returns to Jidada – and, specifically, to the
township of Lozikeyi – after a decade in exile. She finds that her
mother, Simiso, has spent the last ten years searching for her.
Simiso is now missing. In the subsequent days, Destiny recalls the
2008 election, after which the Old Horse violently suppressed all
opposition. This violence prompted Destiny to flee Jidada. Many
of Simiso’s friends gather at her home and conduct a prayer;
Simiso appears, seemingly out of nowhere.
 Glory: Plot
• The Old Horse, in disguise, meanders around Jidada. He is shocked by the poverty,
deteriorating infrastructure, and abysmal educational system. The Old Horse experiences a
strange, hallucinatory incident involving blood, corpses, and butterflies.

• The day of the election finally arrives. A clear majority of Jidadans plan to vote for the
Opposition Party. As they await results, many Jidadans watch a video of a policeman
killing a Black man in the United States. In Lozikeyi, a medium calls up the spirit of an
enormous black bull. Jidadans soon learn that Tuvy has apparently won the election. The
military – known as Defenders – violently subdued the ensuing anti-government protests.
 Glory: Plot
• Simiso tells Destiny about her experience during the
Gukurahundi. Simiso, the daughter of a freedom fighter, grows
up in the town of Bulawayo. In the aftermath of independence,
the Old Horse begins a genocidal campaign against ethnic
minorities, including the Ndebele people. Defenders brutally
murder Simiso’s entire family; only Simiso and her infant
daughter, Destiny, escape. In the present, Simiso strips and shows
Destiny her many scars. Destiny, in response, takes off her own
clothes and shows her mother the wounds she sustained in the
aftermath of the 2008 election.
 Glory: Plot
• Tuvy basks in the glow of his illegitimate victory. He makes
frequent, lavish trips abroad. His new financial minister advises
that he institute new taxes on Jidadans to offset the monetary
losses caused by government corruption. Jidadans assemble in
long lines in an attempt to access food, fuel, and other basic
resources. Some nostalgically recall the Old Horse’s reign.
Protests erupt when news breaks of Tuvy’s new taxes; Defenders
again suppress these demonstrations. The government institutes
an internet shutdown that prevents citizens from utilizing social
media.
 Glory: Plot
• A large crocodile – who claims to be harmless—roams
Jidada. Many citizens take to social media to express their
discontentment towards the government. Living
conditions and institutional corruption continue to
worsen. The Crocodile begins to commit violent acts
across the country.
 Glory: Plot
• Destiny becomes romantically involved with a painter named
Golden Maseko. She travels to Bulawayo to revisit her family
history. A group of vendors praises her grandfather’s
contributions to the area and tells her stories about her family.
Destiny speaks to her dead family members and sees an
enormous group of butterflies. In Lozikeyi, Destiny mysteriously
finds a pen behind her ear; Simiso says that her father (Destiny’s
grandfather) used the same type of pen. Destiny spends days
writing a book about her family history and her hopes for
Jidada’s future.
 Glory: Plot
• At a remembrance for missing and murdered citizens, Destiny
reads from her book. Defenders break up the event and kill
Destiny. In the aftermath of Destiny’s death, Jidadans creates a
large mural outside of Simiso’s house that commemorates victims
of government violence. When Defenders arrive to arrest Simiso,
community members kill the Defenders. Massive protests ensue.
Unlike in previous uprisings, the citizens are fearless and willing
to die.
 Glory: Plot
• Defenders drop their arms and join their fellow Jidadans in
protest against Tuvy and the government. They imprison Tuvy
and his ministers and eventually kill the Crocodile. The Old
Horse dies in a foreign hospital. In the afterlife, the Old Horse
tours Jidada and learns that he will go to Hell. A group of
children enlists Golden Maseko to paint a new, beautiful flag for
Jidada.
 Characters
The Old Horse
• The Old Horse is the protagonist and incumbent president of the Jidada
nation. Old Horse has been in power for over forty years. Old Horse plans
to stay in power until he dies and then be succeeded by his wife, Dr. Sweet
Mother. Unfortunately, the animals in the Jidada nation are tired of Old
Horse, and they want him out of power. The Army conducts a bloodless
coup and withdraws Old Horse from power. The vice president of Old
Horse, Tuviou, is declared the new president.
 Characters
Shasha
• Shasha is Old Horse’s vice president, and he takes power after the
Army executes a bloodless coup. The animals in the Jidada Nation are
tired of Old Horse because he is a dictator, and the economy is
worsening daily. The animals in Jidada are optimistic that Tuvius is a
new dawn and are looking forward to a better economy full of
opportunities.
 Characters

Commander Jambanja
• Jambanja is the notorious general heading the Jidada Defenders.
Jimbanja, in charge of security, ensures the safety of the Father of
the nations, especially during national celebrations. Nothing can
go wrong when Jambanja is in control because his junior officers
fear him, and they strictly follow commands.
 Characters

God
• God is the Supreme Being and is the one who appoints leaders.
Old Horse always reminds his citizens that he is the Father of the
Nation because he is God’s chosen. According to Old Horse,
God does not make mistakes, and citizens must learn to respect
and adore him.
 Characters

Prophet Dr. O. G. Moses

• Dr. O. G. Moses is the founder of the famed soldiers of Christ's
Prophetic Church of Churches. The prophet is Dr. Sweet Mother’s
spiritual Father and advisor. Dr. Moses’ church works closely with
the Father of the Nation to remind citizens that leaders are God-
chosen. When politicians want to brainwash the citizens, they
involve the church.
 Characters

The Citizens
• The citizens are the Jidada Nation's animals under Old Horse's
and his team's leadership. The animals are tired of Old Horse
because he is a dictator and does not want to get out of power
after ruling for over forty years. When Old Horse is withdrawn
from power in a bloodless coup by the Army, the citizens are
very happy, and their jubilation can be seen everywhere.
 Characters

Dr. Sweet Mother

• Dr. Sweet Mother is a donkey, wife to Old Horse, and she
expects to become the next president after the death of his
husband. Dr. Sweet Mother is younger than her husband, and
she hopes the remaining part of her husband's presidency
belongs to her. However. Dr. Sweet Mother crushes her husband
when he is forcefully withdrawn from power.
 Symbolism, Symbols, Similes and
Metaphors
The Jidada Defenders
• The author, to symbolise police brutality figuratively, uses the Jidada Defenders.
Animals in the Jidada Nation are forced to obey the authorities without question.
The incumbent president, Old Horse, is brutal, and he uses the police to frustrate
whoever tries to criticize his administration. The author writes, “The Jidada
Defenders by nature are violent, morbid beasts, and notorious.” When some
animals try to get out of the Jidada Squire, citing frustration with the long wait,
they are brutally faced with the Jidada Defenders. The frustrated animals have no
option but to return to the squire miserably with tails between their legs.
 Symbolism, Symbols, Similes and
Metaphors
The Old Horse as a symbol of dictatorship
• The Old Horse symbolises dictatorship by incumbent African leaders. To be
specific, Old Horse represents Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, who is old but
does not want to get out of power. Mugabe wants to die while in office as
a president, and he plans to be replaced by his wife. In the novel, a donkey
called Marvelous or Dr. Sweet Mother represents Mugabe’s wife. The
citizens were fed up with Old Horse’s leadership, and the country
underwent a bloodless couple to remove the incumbent president from
power in 2017. His vice president, Mr. Tuvius, replaces the old Horse, and
the animals are hopeful that the future will be bright.
 Symbolism, Symbols, Similes and
Metaphors
The white tent
• The white tent inside Jidada Square symbolises the disparity between the rich and the
poor. When the president arrives in the Jidada Squire after a long wait, he is ushered into
the white tent to sit alongside the powerful ruling party members. The guests in the white
tent show a sign of mighty from the expensive wear, jewelry, and other precious
accessories. Additionally, the guests in the white tent are healthy, showing that they have
everything in life. On the field are the animals under the scorching sun; most are hungry,
tired, and hopeless. Consequently, the luxury of the president and his guests shows the true
picture of the disparity between the wealthy and the ordinary animals in the Jidada
nation.
 Symbolism, Symbols, Similes and
Metaphors
The simile “Keeping feelings inside like intestines”
• The Jidada nation is unlike any other in the continent because its
leader, Old Horse, is God-Chosen and most feared. During a
rally, animals gather in the Jidada Square, waiting eagerly for the
Father of the Nation to come and address them. Once assembled
in the Jidada Squire, the citizens are not allowed to get out until
their president Old Horse comes and addresses them. The Father
of the Nation is taking too long to come, and people are starting
to have anxiety about leaving
 Symbolism, Symbols, Similes and
Metaphors
The simile “Keeping feelings inside like intestines”
• However, they must keep their feelings inside like intestines and
wait even longer. The author writes, “But the land of farm
animals wasn’t any other place, it was Jidada, yes, tholukuthi
Jidada with a-da another –da, and just remembering this simple
fact was simple enough to make most of the animals keep their
feelings inside like intestines.” The citizens are obliged to obey
national rallies without showing their frustrations even if Old
Horse fails to show up.
 Symbolism, Symbols, Similes and
Metaphors
God’s infallible machete
• The wrong perception of leaders in the continent is demonstrated by the simile of God's
infallible machete. Animals have been gathered since morning, waiting for President Old
Horse to come and address them, but he takes too long to turn up. Leaders believe that
people have nothing important apart from waiting for them and singing praise songs. The
author writes, “But not all the animals were going to stand for the torturous wait, some
indeed started to leave, grumbling about having work and other things to do, about places
to go, about the leaders of other lands who arrived at things right on time like God’s
infallible machete.” The animals notice that leaders of other nations keep time because
they value nation-building and do not have time to waste.
 Symbolism, Symbols, Similes and
Metaphors
The metaphor of the nine life spans of a hundred cats
• The author uses the metaphor of the nine life spans of a hundred cats
to symbolise Old Horse’s dictatorial regime and unwillingness to quit
power. The author writes, “Enter the father of the nation: the ruler
whose reign is longer than the nine life spans of a hundred cats.” Old
Horse is the longest-serving leader in the continent and the whole
world. The metaphor shows that African leaders have not embraced
democracy and believe they must die while in power.
 Who was Robert Mugabe?
• Robert Gabriel Mugabe was the President of Zimbabwe from 1987 to
2017. For much of his life, Mugabe was considered to be an African
nationalist (even though he sometimes called himself a Marxist and a
socialist). He was a deeply unpopular man and at best divisive president
accused by some of being a dictator who ruled with an iron fist.

• Initially, NoViolet Bulawayo intended to write a non-fiction book about

Mugabe. But that non-fiction book quickly turned into a political satire -
a political satire that was inspired by the life and rule of Mugabe and his
time in Zimbabwe.
 How do Glory and Animal Farm
Compare?
• Glory and Animal Farm, while fundamentally different novels
share several qualities. Superficially, each novel involves animals
that are smart and able to talk. On a deeper level, though,
like Animal Farm, Glory deals with complex issues like the
complex relationship between a person and power and
dictatorship. Some reviewers have, in fact,
called Glory “Zimbabwe’s Animal Farm.”
 What is Glory an allegory for?
• Glory, quite simply, is an allegory - through the lenses of animals
- dealing with how a country suffers under the tyranny of an
evil, self-obsessed ruler. It is also an allegory for the power of an
individual’s freedom (as well as the group they are a part of) in a
technologically “advanced” age. The novel is, in essence, a
warning against dictators and those who would take away the
freedom of their citizens.
 Discussion
• “Negritude is rarely read in animal rights discourse. Yet its
thought is founded on similar notions of interdependent
posthuman energies. Senghor’s poetic and philosophical writing
is informed by a totemic belief system that undermines the
distinction between humans and nature; it gains its vitality from
numerous references to animals and the cosmos that emphasise
that humans cannot reach their potential without animals and
nature” (Evan Maina Mwangi, 2019:27-28). Discuss this assertion
using any two relevant poems by Leopold Sedar Senghor.
 Discussion
• The advance of biological sciences in the last two hundred years
seems to have narrowed the distance between humans and
animals, and scientists themselves are active in promoting the
welfare of experimental animals. Does this mean that continued
use of animals in science is inconsistent and morally
condemnable as “speciesism”?
 Environmental Justice in Africa
• In early June 2009, Shell Oil Corporation agreed to pay more
than fifteen million U.S. dollars to a group of ten Nigerian
plaintiffs, most prominently the son of writer Ken Saro-Wiwa.
The plaintiffs had accused Shell Oil of collaborating with the
Nigerian military in the 1995 execution of Saro-Wiwa and eight
other leaders of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni
Peoples (MOSOP). MOSOP and Saro-Wiwa had tied their
nonviolent advocacy for human rights in Ogoniland to
highlighting the oil industry’s devastating impacts on the
ecosystem of their Niger Delta homeland.
 Environmental Justice in Africa
• Although Shell Oil still dismissed the charges, its willingness to
settle the case – critics argued that the company “bought their
way out of a trial” – inevitably brought home the message that
large multinational corporations can be brought to justice for
violations of human rights and environmental devastation.
• Ken Saro-Wiwa was a well-known writer whose life’s work
focused on environmental justice. On the other side of Africa,
Kenya’s 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai
travelled somewhat the reverse path
 Environmental Justice in Africa
• Wangari Maathai is an environmental activist and the founder of
the Green Belt Movement, and her best-selling memoir,
Unbowed, is highly regarded. In the tragic murder of Saro-Wiwa
and the triumphal ascent of Maathai, we see clearly the manner
in which the literary and environmental have been prominently
connected in Africa as well as the ways in which those two
figures emphasize the link between environmental activism and
social justice.
 Environmental Justice in Africa
• African writers-as-environmentalists and African environmentalists-as-writers
offer powerful alternative ways of understanding nature, conservation, and
development, in contrast with dominant ideas of the environment.
• “I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the
lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. […]. I’ve
always thought that African countries are vastly under-polluted; their air
quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles. […].
Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank encourage more
migration of the dirty industries to the Least Developed Countries?”
(Lawrence Summers [then President of the World Bank], confidential World
Bank memo, December 12, 1991; quoted by Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and
the Environmentalism of the Poor, 2011:1).
 Environmental Justice in Africa
• Africa faces many environmental changes that are reflected in
literature. It is worth noting that: “In Sub-Saharan Africa, the
natural resource sector is arguably the largest driver of
environmental justice claims and actions, with a surge of
extractive sector activity leading to a dramatic transformation of
landscapes, pressures on arable land, destruction of ecosystems
critical to rural livelihoods, and creation of highly toxic forms of
air and water pollution which create lasting challenges to human
health and ecosystem services. Africa hosts about 30% of the
planet’s mineral reserves, including 40% of its gold, 60% of its
cobalt, and 90% of platinum group minerals.
 Environmental Justice in Africa
• Relatively unconstrained executive power, strong incentives for
private investment, and powerful interests by external entities in
extracting African resources have converged to create rapidly
growing challenges of environmental sustainability and social
equity.” (see UNDP, Environmental Justice: Comparative
Experiences in Legal Empowerment, 2014:17; African Union
UNECA (2011) Minerals and Africa’s Development 2011 Report:)
• The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift,
deforestation, oil spills, pollution, garbage, plastic waste, toxic
waste, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place
gradually and often invisibly; affecting the poor more than the
affluent.
 What is Environmental Justice?
• Environmental justice is a social movement and a theoretical
lens, that is focussed on fairness in the distribution of
environmental benefits and burdens, and in the processes that
determine those distributions. That is, it is concerned with both
the ‘fair treatment’ and the ‘significant involvement’ of poor,
racialised, and indigenous communities in environmental policy
and natural resource development decisions that have typically
resulted in those communities bearing more than their “fair
share” of environmental harms.
 What is Environmental Justice?
• Environmental justice is a praxis, it draws from and integrates
theory and practice into a mutually informing dialogue. Framing
environmental justice in this way provides the flexibility needed
to allow it to encompass the wide variety of dynamics that are
brought forward by many different populations, problems, and
places. According to Environmental Justice Politics, Poetics and
Pedagogy (2002), the term “environmental justice” is defined as
“the right of all people to share equally in the benefits bestowed
by a healthy environment” (Adamson, Evans & Stein 4).
 What is Environmental Justice?
• The term “environmental justice” carries with it a sort of ambiguity.
On the one hand, it refers to a movement of social activism in which
those involved fight and argue for fairer, more equitable distribution
of environmental goods and equal treatment of environmental duties.
This movement is related to, and ideally informed by, the second use
of the term, which refers to the academic discipline associated with
legal regulations and theories of justice and ethics concerning
sustainability, the environment, and ecology. However, activists who
pay careful attention to the arguments offered concerning the
political, legal, social, and philosophical treatments of these issues are
potentially in a stronger position in their social movement. In that
way, the two uses of the term may progress hand in hand.
 Discussion

• Environmental justice, a term that incorporates “environmental

racism” and “environmental classism,” captures the idea that
different racial and socioeconomic groups experience differential
access to environmental quality. Using five points, explain how
this is reflected in African literature.
 “To the Senegalese Riflemen Who Died
For France” by Leopold Sedar Senghor
Here is the Sun
Which tightens the breasts of the virgins
Who makes the old men smile on the green benches
Who would awaken the dead under a maternal earth.
I hear the sound of cannon – is it from Irun?
They put flowers on tombs and warm the Unknown Soldier.
You my dark brothers, no one appoints you.
Five hundred thousand of your children are promised glory
of the future deaths, they thank them in advance, future
dark dead.
Die Schwarze Schande!
 “To the Senegalese Riflemen Who Died
For France” by Leopold Sedar Senghor
Listen to me, Senegalese Riflemen, in the solitude of
………..black earth and death
In your solitude without eyes without ears, more than
………..I in my dark skin at the depths of the Province,
Without even the warmth of your comrades lying close to
………..you, as in the trenches in
………..the village palavers long ago,
Listen to me, black skin Riflemen, well without
………..ears and eyes in your threefold chamber
………..at night.
 “To the Senegalese Riflemen Who Died
For France” by Leopold Sedar Senghor
We have not borrowed mourners, nor
………..tears from your former wives
………..—They only remember your
………..fury and prefer the stench of the living.
The mourners’ laments come too clear,
Too quickly drying up the cheeks of your wives, as
………..in the Fouta streams in the dry season,
The warmest tears too clear and too quickly
………..drunk from the corners of the forgetful lips.
 “To the Senegalese Riflemen Who Died
For France” by Leopold Sedar Senghor
We bring you, listen to us, we who epilate
………..your names in the months of your death,
We, in these days of fear without memory, we bring
………..you the friendship of your comrades
Ah! May I, one day, in a voice glowing like embers,
………..may I sing
The friendship of the comrades fervent as bowels
………..and delicate as entrails, strong as tendons.
Listen to us, Dead in the deep water
………..plains of the northern and the eastern fields.
Receive this red soil, under a summer sun this redden soil
………..blood of the white hosts
Receive the salute of your black comrades, Senegalese
………..Riflemen
DEATH FOR THE REPUBLIC!
 “The Mystic Drum” by Gabriel Okara
The mystic drum in my inside Still my drum continued to
and fishes danced in the rivers beat, rippling the air with
and men and women danced quickened tempo compelling
on land to the rhythm of my the quick and the dead to
drum dance and sing with their
shadows –
But standing behind a tree with
leaves around her waist she
only smiled with a shake of her But standing behind a tree with
head. leaves around her waist she
only smiled with a shake of her
head.
 “The Mystic Drum” by Gabriel Okara
Then the drum beat with the with leaves around her waist
rhythm of the things of the she only smiled with a shake of
ground and invoked the eye of her head.
the sky the sun and the moon
and the river gods - and the
trees bean to dance, the fishes And then the mystic drum in
turned men and men turned my inside stopped to beat - and
fishes and things stopped to men became men, fishes
grow – became fishes and trees, the sun
and the moon found their
places, and the dead went to
But standing behind a tree the ground and things began to
grow.
 “The Mystic Drum” by Gabriel Okara
And behind the tree
she stood with roots sprouting from her feet
and leaves growing on her head
and smoke issuing from her nose
and her lips parted in her smile
turned cavity belching darkness.

Then, then I packed my mystic drum

and turned away; never to beat so loud any more.
 “The Mystic Drum” by Gabriel Okara
• The drum in African poetry, generally stands for the spiritual
pulse of traditional African life. The poet asserts that first, as the
drum beat inside him, fishes danced in the rivers and men and
women danced on the land to the rhythm of the drum. But
standing behind the tree, there stood an outsider who smiled
with an air of indifference at the richness of their culture.
However, the drum still continued to beat rippling the air with
quickened tempo compelling the dead to dance and sing with
their shadows. The ancestral glory overpowers other
considerations. So powerful is the mystic drum, that it brings
back even the dead alive. The rhythm of the drum is the aching
for an ideal Nigerian State of harmony.
 “The Mystic Drum” by Gabriel Okara
• The outsider still continued to smile at the culture from the distance.
The outsider stands for Western Imperialism that has looked down
upon anything Eastern, non-Western, alien and therefore,
‘incomprehensible for their own good’ as ‘The Other’. The African
culture is so much in tune with nature that the mystic drum invokes
the sun, the moon, the river gods and the trees began to dance. The
gap finally gets bridged between humanity and nature, the animal
world and human world, the hydrosphere and lithosphere that fishes
turned men, and men became fishes. But later as the mystic drum
stopped beating, men became men, and fishes became fishes. Life
now became dry, logical and mechanical thanks to Western Scientific
Imperialism and everything found its place. Leaves started sprouting
on the woman; she started to flourish on the land
 “The Mystic Drum” by Gabriel Okara
• Gradually her roots struck the ground. Spreading a kind of
parched rationalism, smoke issued from her lips and her lips
parted in smile. The term ’smoke’ is also suggestive of the
pollution caused by industrialization, and also the clouding of
morals.. Ultimately, the speaker was left in ‘belching darkness’,
completely cut off from the heart of his culture, and he packed
off the mystic drum not to beat loudly anymore. The ‘belching
darkness” alludes to the futility and hollowness of the imposed
existence.
 “The Mystic Drum” by Gabriel Okara
• The outsider, at first, only has an objective role standing behind
a tree. Eventually, she intrudes and tries to weave their spiritual
life. The ‘leaves around her waist’ are very much suggestive of
Eve who adorned the same after losing her innocence. Leaves
stop growing on the trees but only sprout on her head signifying
‘deforestation.” The refrain reminds us again and again, that this
Eve turns out to be the eve of Nigerian damnation. Okara
mentions in one of his interviews that “The Mystic Drum” is
essentially a love poem:
 “The Mystic Drum” by Gabriel Okara
• “This was a lady I loved. And she coyly was not responding
directly, but I adored her. Her demeanor seemed to mask her
true feelings; at a distance, she seemed adoring, however, on
coming closer, she was, after all, not what she seemed.” This
lady may stand as an emblem that represents the lure of Western
life; how it seemed appealing at first but later came across as
distasteful to the poet.
 Discussion
• “The civilisation set in motion during the colonial era and
inspired by histories of empire will continue to create human
waste and then view it with contempt or treat it with violence.”
(Anthony Vital)
• “It is a world without spaciousness; men live there on top of
each other, and their huts are built one on top of the other.”
(Frantz Fanon)
• Using these quotations as a point of departure, examine how
humans are depicted as waste in slum ecology in African poetry
Humans as Waste in the Global Capitalist
Economy
• Much as humans as waste may give the impression of the kind of
anthropocentricism discouraged by recent African ecocritical
studies (Iheka, Egya “Out of Africa,” Moolla), it seeks to embody
the crossing of environment and history, and the nervous
position of the (post)colonial subject in the global network of
power and capital: “humans take on the form of waste in
contemporary capitalist society” (Michelle Yates, 1680).
Humans as Waste in the Global Capitalist
Economy
• The wording expresses a nod to the view that the anthropo in
Anthropocene refers to the humans and systems that control the
means of production and profit unjustly from exploiting and
wasting both humans and the environment within the last two
hundred years.
• The African slum, therefore, a product of the capitalist colonial
encounter and its shadows, consists of people and space, which
makes it impossible to ignore the marginalised mass of human
beings who share the space with other natural entities.
“Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
The earth is ours to plough and plant
The hoe is our barber
The dribble her dimple
Out with mattock and matchetes
Bring calabash trays and rocking baskets
Let the sweat which swells earth root
Relieve heavy heaps of their tuberous burdens.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
Let the wheatfals raise their breads on hands
To ripening clothe the naked bosom
Of shivering mounds
Let the pawpaw swell and swing its head weard breasts.

let the water spring

from earths unfathomed fountain
Let gold rush
From the deep unseeable mines
Hitch up a ladder to the dodging sky
Let put a sun in every night.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
Our earth is an unopened grain house
A bustling barn in some fax uncharted jungle
A distance gem in a rough unhappy dust
The earth is ours to work not to waste
Ours to man not to maim
This earth is ours to plough, not to plunder.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
• A poem is a group of spoken or written words that creatively
and vividly convey concepts or feelings. A specific rhythmic and
metrical pattern makes up a poem. As it is either in free verse or
metrical rhythm, it is actually a literary device that differs from
prose or everyday speech. Poets and writers find it easier to
communicate their feelings via poetry or writing than through
other forms of expression. It acts as a light to guide the readers in
the proper direction. Occasionally, it imparts a moral message to
them using pretentious language.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
• The poem “Our earth is ours to plough and not to plunder” by
Niyi Osundare is a powerful piece that highlights the importance
of responsible stewardship of the Earth. Osundare, a Nigerian
poet and professor, uses vivid imagery and thought-provoking
language to convey his message.
• The title of the poem immediately sets the tone and
theme, emphasizing the idea that the Earth is not something to
be exploited or taken advantage of, but rather a precious
resource that should be nurtured and protected. The use of the
word “plough” suggests a sense of cultivation and care, while
“plunder” conveys a sense of greed and destruction.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
• Throughout the poem, Osundare employs various literary
devices to convey his message effectively. One such device is
imagery, which helps to create vivid mental pictures for the
reader. For example, in the first stanza, he writes:
“Our earth is ours to plough and not to plunder,
Great green garden where all mortals must wander,
Each morn we come on bended knees
To kiss its sod and plant our seeds.”
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
• Here, Osundare paints a picture of a lush and fertile earth,
emphasizing its beauty and abundance. The act of coming on
“bended knees” suggests humility and reverence towards nature.
• Another notable aspect of the poem is its use of repetition. The
phrase “our earth is ours” is repeated throughout, reinforcing the
idea that humans have a responsibility to take care of the Earth.
This repetition also serves to emphasize the possessive nature of
our relationship with the planet, reminding us that it is our
collective duty to protect it.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
• Osundare also employs strong metaphors in his poem. In the
second stanza, he writes:
“But now we come with greedy eyes,
With hands whose fingers are ten times ten,
To snatch away what others have sown,
To claim what others have grown.”
• Here, he compares those who exploit the Earth to greedy
individuals with insatiable appetites. The use of metaphorical
language helps to convey the destructive nature of plundering
the Earth’s resources.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
• The poem continues to highlight the consequences of our
actions, warning that if we continue on this path of plunder, we
will ultimately destroy the very source of our sustenance.
Osundare writes:
“And when we have eaten up all that is green,
When we have drunk up all that is sweet,
When we have breathed up all that is clean,
When we have taken all that is meet,
Then will we know what our greed has done.”
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
• These lines serve as a stark reminder of the potential consequences of
our actions if we do not change our ways. The depletion of natural
resources and the degradation of the environment will ultimately lead
to our own downfall.
• Niyi Osundare’s “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” is an agricultural
poem using the rewards found in planting and harvesting as the
reasons to encourage people to embrace farming. Based on natural
phenomena and the words of the poet, farming is a very useful
investment. The poet or the poem speaker is of the faith that people’s
engagement in agriculture and farming will divert their attention from
wrong implementations of the huge material rewards God has kept in
the soil for humans benefit.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
• The structure of the poem is a free verse of unequal stanzas. The
poet was preoccupied with the need for people to embrace
farming, so he used the third-person point of view in expressing
his feelings. The poem very evident poetic devices in the poem
are repetition, alliteration, antithesis, metaphor, etc. “The hoe is
her barber” is an example of both metaphor and personification.
“The dibble her dimple” is an example of metaphor, alliteration,
and personification. “Ours to work not to waste/ ours to man
not to main” both lines are examples of parallelism with
embedded antithesis. “Let’s put a sun in every night” symbolises
the practice of mining at night.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
• Judging by the use of figurative terms and the grammatical choice of
the poet, one can conclude that the diction of the poem is a very easy
one. It must also be noted that the poet used a persuasive tone to
encourage the love for agriculture and mining.
1. Nature
• In “Ours to Plough Not To Plunder”, the elements of nature – the
forest, rocks, and rain are employed as metaphors for the exploration
of life and the activities associated with farming. Thus, Osundare’s
preoccupation in the collection includes emphasis on human
responsibilities and actions to save Nature, aesthetics of reconciling
humanity with Nature, a critique of capitalists’ commodification of
Nature and the environment, the dynamics of eco-poetry or eco-
criticism in reclaiming Nature, and the impacts of global capitalism.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
1. Nature
• In the “Earth” which is of course the first poem in the collection,
Osundare uses the metaphor of the earth as the ephemeral house
of man “dust”, perhaps after the death of man. He further
celebrates the earth as the source of food: “breadbasket / and
compost bed” and also reveals its relationship with other nature
embodiments such as “water”, “rivers”, “muds”, “sun”, “sea”,
and ‘sky”
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
2. God’s treasure in the soil
• The poet in his poem “Ours to Plough Not To Plunder” portrays the
soil as one of the most important treasures which God has given to
man this can be seen in this:
“Let wheat fields raise their bread some hands
To the ripening sun
Let legumes clothe the naked bosom
Of shivering mounds
Let the pawpaw swell and swing
Its headward breast” (stanza 3)
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
2. God’s treasure in the soil
• The environment is the planetary support on which all human
activities depend. It includes the land we live on, the water we
use, the air we breathe, and the space we see everywhere. We
are all products of the environment, with the earth being our
forte. Our environment makes or mars us. Besides, without
environmental security, a component of human security, that
concerns living in a healthy physical environment spared from
desertification, deforestation, and other threats that endanger
our survival, we are all in trouble.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
2. God’s treasure in the soil
• The poet acknowledges land as a free gift of God to mankind
which all life excised. Nigeria has the benefit of having large
stretches of fertile land available to cultivate. This country has
one of the largest expanses of land in Africa with more than 900
thousand square kilometers and 70 percent of it is able to be
cultivated to produce sustenance for the population of Nigeria.
This land provides Nigeria with practically an unlimited source of
farming food, providing agricultural produce and jobs for the
people.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
• Niyi Osundare’s poem “Ours to plough and not to plunder”, the
poet portrays many riches and the irony of what it has become
today. Mother Earth is forced to drink the blood of her children,
her beautiful clothes of rich green grasses and trees of various
kinds with sweet smelling flowers have turned into rags from oil
spills, refuse dumps, decomposing corpses, floods, and the
numerous destruction from the various bombing activities of
different groups.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
• Why do we bring so much shame to her, why do we turn
ourselves who are her children into instruments of her pain?
Even God himself weeps at the sight of what she has become.
Nigeria, we used to be Africa’s pride, her giant, her beauty, her
glory… Where are these now… All of them, we have traded,
and for what? Greed, pride and covetousness. Our homeland
which is supposed to provide refuge and succor has turned into
large mouths of scary pits that swallow us.
 “Ours to Plough, Not to Plunder” Niyi
Osundare
• Did I hear you ask “where are the elders?”… Of course we have
them, but they themselves are the reason for our downfall. They
were to lead us to greatness but instead, they lead us to
perdition, they were to guide us but they seem confused
themselves, they were to care for us but they neglect us, caring
for themselves and their pockets. The youths they say are the
leaders of tomorrow but they have turned us into thugs, thieves,
assassins, and all sorts of evil machinery.
 The World Bank and IMF Imposed SAPs
& Environmental
What Is a Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP)?
• A structural adjustment programme (SAP) is a set of economic
reforms that a country must adhere to in order to secure a loan from
the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank.
• SAPs often consist of economic policies such as reducing government
spending and opening up to free trade, among others. Proponents
argue that SAPs encourage economic sufficiency, while opponents
criticize them for imposing austerity on already poor nations.
 The World Bank and IMF Imposed SAPs
& Environmental
Key Takeaways
• Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) are arrangements in which loans
from the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank are made available
to countries on the condition that recipients enact certain economic policies.
• The economic conditions imposed by SAPs aim to make the recipient
country competitive and reduce economic dependence.
• Common conditions include devaluing currency, cutting public spending,
and privatising industry.
• SAPs have been criticised for imposing hardship on poorer nations and their
citizens.
 The World Bank and IMF Imposed SAPs
& Environmental
Understanding SAPs
• Structural adjustment programs (SAPs) are commonly thought of as
free-market reforms, and they are made conditional on the assumption
that they will make the nation in question more competitive and
encourage economic growth. The International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and World Bank – two Bretton Woods institutions that date
from the 1940s – have long imposed conditions on their loans.
However, the 1980s saw a concerted push to turn lending to crisis-
stricken poor countries into springboards for reform
 The World Bank and IMF Imposed SAPs
& Environmental
Controversies Surrounding SAPs
• To proponents, SAPs encourage countries to become economically
self-sufficient by creating an environment that is friendly to
innovation, investment, and growth
• Unconditional loans, according to this reasoning, would only initiate a
cycle of dependence, in which countries in financial trouble borrow
without fixing the systemic flaws that caused the financial trouble in
the first place
• This would inevitably lead to further borrowing down the line.
 The World Bank and IMF Imposed SAPs
& Environmental
• SAPs have attracted sharp criticism, however, for imposing austerity
policies on already-poor nations. Critics argue that the burden of SAPs
falls most heavily on women, children, and other vulnerable groups.
• Critics also portray conditional loans as a tool of neocolonialism.
According to this argument, rich countries offer bailouts to poor ones
– their former colonies, in many cases – in exchange for reforms that
open the poor countries up to exploitative investment by multinational
corporations. Since these firms’ shareholders live in rich countries, the
colonial dynamics are perpetuated, albeit with nominal national
sovereignty for the former colonies.
 The World Bank and IMF Imposed SAPs
& Environmental
• Enough evidence had built from the 1980s to the 2000s showing that
they often reduced the standard of living in the short-term within
countries adhering to them, that the IMF publicly stated that it was
reducing SAPs. This appeared to be the case through the early 2000s,
but the use of SAPs grew to previous levels again in 2014. This has
again raised criticism, particularly that countries under SAPs have less
policy freedom to deal with economic shocks, while the rich lending
nations can pile on public debt freely to ride out global economic
storms that often originate in their markets.
 The World Bank and IMF Imposed SAPs
& Environmental
What Are the Types of Reforms Common in SAPs?
• SAPs are most often conceived as market liberalisation programmes.
As such, the reforms common to SAPs include policies to stabilise an
economy, liberalise it, deregulate, and privatise
• Much of the debate on debt, structural adjustment, and environmental
linkages focuses on the pressure to earn foreign exchange to stabilise
the balance of payments, causing countries to ‘mine’ their natural
resource base in an unsustainable way.
 The World Bank and IMF Imposed SAPs
& Environmental
• In Sub-Saharan Africa, there is widespread poverty, fragile resources,
high population growth rates, and low economic growth rates. The
high population growth rate stresses the natural resource base and
taxes the government’s already limited financial and institutional
capacity to provide essential social services
• Malawi initiated a Structural Adjustment Programme in 1987, which,
since mid-1988, has been supported by the IMF through an
arrangement under the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility
(ESAF), the first such programme with an IMF member country.
 The World Bank and IMF Imposed SAPs
& Environmental
• The pervasive nature of poverty in Malawi was recognised in
formulating the ESAF-supported programme. Five principal factors
were viewed as obstacles to poverty reduction in Malawi: (1) limited
employment opportunities; (2) low physical productivity of land and
labour, leading to low agricultural output; (3) poor health and
educational services, which undermined the development of efficient
and productive human capital; (4) rapid population growth, which
created severe pressure on land resources; and (5) minimal income
transfers.
 The World Bank and IMF Imposed SAPs
& Environmental
• Critics claim SAPs increase poverty and associated environmental
degradation; create incentives to overexploit natural resources,
particularly for export; and weaken public sector capacity to
implement environmental policies (Brzovic, 1989; Hansen-Kuhn,
1993; Reed, 1992)
• When structural adjustment assistance policies were first devised, little
time was devoted to making prior assessments of their impact on the
environment, nor to considering positive environmental measures that
could be incorporated into the associated conditions.
•
 The World Bank and IMF Imposed SAPs
& Environmental
• About deforestation and forest degradation, SAPs have been said to
contribute to these problems by:
1. inducing migration to agricultural frontier areas, as a result of
increased unemployment and rural poverty (Cruz and Repetto,
1992);
2. stimulating forest clearing for agricultural export products through
currency devaluations, fiscal incentives for exports, and the removal
of agricultural price controls (Frickman Young and Bishop, 1995);
and,
3. promoting timber exports from unmanaged forests through currency
devaluations (Pimental et al., 1991; Tchoungui et al., 1995).1
 The World Bank and IMF Imposed SAPs
& Environmental
• SAPs have had serious negative effects on the quality of life enjoyed
by their people, particularly the most vulnerable groups within their
societies
• These include rising unemployment, increased food prices, higher
costs for education and health care, and a rapid decline in the
availability of services in rural areas
• Both the IMF and the major multilateral donor organisations,
including the World Bank, have acknowledged that there have been
severe costs associated with the programmes
 The World Bank and IMF Imposed SAPs
& Environmental
• Growing inequality
• Loss of food security
• Impact on the environment
• Exogenous factors – structural adjustment at the national level is
meaningless without a corresponding adjustment in the world
economy
 Discussion

• Define the term “wilderness.”

• What is metaphysical holism?

• What is biocentric egalitarianism?

• Kelbessa (2009:10) observes that “African worldviews […] involve
environmentally friendly beliefs and laws that have encouraged or
enforced limits to the exploitation of biological resources.” Explain
how this “environmentally friendly” African worldview is reflected in
African literature.
 Discussion
• Malawi 2063 Enabler 7: Environmental Sustainability, reads in
part, “The challenges confronting environmental sustainability in
Malawi are both externally and internally induced. These include:
natural disasters and climate adversities; environmental degradation;
weak institutional capacity and coordination exacerbated by political
interference in regulation and enforcement; limited awareness of
environmental best practices; data gaps and limited funding for
environment sustainability initiatives” (p. 43).
 Discussion

Using any three of the environmental challenges mentioned in the

passage above:
• explain how they are reflected in African literature.
• how are they specifically caused?
• provide solutions to each challenge.
 Discussion
• Examine how Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) imposed by
the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
have hegemonically de-industrialised Africa and increased poverty
with negative consequences on the environment. In your answer also
consider the following points:
1. deforestation
2. poor healthy
3. rampant corruption
4. growing inequality
5. increasing food insecurity
 Discussion
• Concerning resources in African, African Union’s Agenda 2063:
The Africa We Want, reads in part, “Africa’s natural resources
play a critical role for vast segments of Africa’s population who
depend on the continent’s biodiversity, forests and land for their
livelihoods directly or indirectly. These natural resources also
make a direct contribution to economic development through
tourism, agriculture, logging and other activities.” (p. 69).
Paradoxically, despite the richness in natural resources, African
remains economically poor. Discuss.
Nature in “African Drought” by Edson
Mpina.
The skies sulk and our hearts grow holes; there is
no rain, and this is month number ten – October
Our hopes shimmer at this sight of clouds conferring together;
but they are sky-coloured matter as
the tint soon scatters, sinking
away like micro-overprint in fugitive ink.
Believers pray for rain, our souls may wait.
They stand at the gate with folded arms.
At any rate souls too need food. Culturalists’ offering
of sacrifices to ancestral spirits never suffices. 1
Each one of us is doing something,
but the skies sulk.
 Kokota-Kokota Nkhalango Zatha: Mvula ndi
Madzi Khwakhwalala, a DVD Play by Claude
Boucher
• Among the Chewa of Central Malawi, the spirits of the ancestors
are represented in the form of animal masks in what is locally
referred to as Gule Wamkulu, Nyau, or Zilombo. Good
behaviour among the people, miyambo and/or nzeru (wisdom)
are reinforced through recourse to animal masks. The belief that
animal masks are sacred help people to conceptualise them in
the religious and non-material realms of life. Because of their
sacredness, animal masks symbolise power and the spirits of the
ancestors that participate in the drama of the living. Gule
Wamkulu masquerades constitute dramatic forms.
 Kokota-Kokota Nkhalango Zatha: Mvula
ndi Madzi Khwakhwalala
• The expressions used in the play create awareness about the
state of the environment in Malawi, for example, kokota-kokota
nkhalango zatha (forests have been denuded), and mvula ndi
madzi khwakhwalala (rainfall and water driven away).
• Willoquet-Maricondi (2010) asserts that “cinematic ecocriticism
urges us to incorporate ecological considerations into the study
of our experiences as producers and consumers of cinema and, in
this way also to acknowledge our role as co-participants with the
nonhuman world in the complex symbiotic process we call
evolution, a process that includes cultural evolution” (xviii – xiv).
 Kokota-Kokota Nkhalango Zatha: Mvula
ndi Madzi Khwakhwalala
• The play, Kokota-Kokota Nkhalango Zatha (2015), is an
ecocinema aimed at what Willoquet-Maricondi (2010) describes
as “consciousness-raising and activist intentions, as well as the
responsibility to heighten awareness about contemporary issues
and practices affecting planetary health” (45).
• The play is divided into six scenes. The first scene begins with the
portrayal of the current state of deforestation largely due to
charcoal production. Then it plunges into the past, reminding the
audience that humans, animals, and plants were created by
Chauta (God). This scene re-enacts the human-animal
relationship in Kaphirintiwa creation myth.
 Kokota-Kokota Nkhalango Zatha: Mvula
ndi Madzi Khwakhwalala
• In this myth, Chauta created humans and animals and made
them land on a huge rock on Kaphirintiwa Mountain. Upon
landing on the rock which was still soft, the humans and animals
left their footprints there as a mark of their primordial harmony
and interconnectedness as creatures of the Supreme Being. In the
third scene, the human being’s accidental invention of fire that
ignited after rubbing two sticks together set the forest ablaze.
• The people lack rains because the land has no trees after the fire
incident and this is the fourth scene. In the fifth scene of the film,
Chauta gives people another chance to save themselves by
sending the Chameleon that carries Chauta’s message about
afforestation
 Kokota-Kokota Nkhalango Zatha: Mvula
ndi Madzi Khwakhwalala
• The sixth and final scene sees the people taking Chameleon’s
message from Chauta about planting trees seriously. It is also
worth noting that after the fire incident in the Kaphirintiwa
myth, most animals ran away from the human being and
become wild animals and those few that remained with the
human being became domestic animals. The spider through its
web helped Chauta to escape into the sky. The play was
produced to commemorate Pope Francis’ Encyclical Letter
(2015).
 Kokota-Kokota Nkhalango Zatha: Mvula
ndi Madzi Khwakhwalala
• The song that forms the background to the opening scene of
Kokota-Kokota Nkhalango Zatha demonstrates cultural activism
in contextualising environmental degradation in human-induced
causes:
 Kokota-Kokota Nkhalango Zatha: Mvula
ndi Madzi Khwakhwalala
Kokota-kokota mitengo yatha! Keep cutting trees and this is the
Ndimanga bwanji nyumba end of forests!
mitengo yatha, How can I build a house, there is
Ndiphika bwanji nsima nkhuni no timber,
zatha. How can I cook, there is no
Owononga achoke-e! firewood,
Ndigona pati, ndidyanji, Plunderers must leave!
ndimwanji? Where can I sleep, what can I eat;
Mvula khwakhwalala. what can I drink?
Ndi mudzi womwe-e! There is no water.
Our village has vanished!
 Kokota-Kokota Nkhalango Zatha: Mvula
ndi Madzi Khwakhwalala
• The song bemoans the loss of trees in Malawi’s forests. The loss
of implies that people have no timber and other construction
materials that use trees. There is also no firewood for cooking.
The song demands that plunderers of forests must leave God’s
earth because they have betrayed their trust (Owononga
achoke). The song then laments about climate change that results
in unpredictable rains. For a country that depends on rain-fed
agriculture, this situation is a great concern.
 Kokota-Kokota Nkhalango Zatha: Mvula
ndi Madzi Khwakhwalala
• The play creates a local ecological discourse that reflects the
gravity of environmental degradation in Malawi. Katz (2001)
says that the remedy to environmental restoration is through the
reorientation of “human social institutions […] so that they can
exist in harmony with the processes and life forms of the natural
world” (159). Malawi has had such institutions like Nyau long
before deep ecological formulations.