CHAPTER FIVE
White Childhoods During Apartheid
Leana van der Merwe
The Ideology of Landscape in Children’s Book Illustrations
Introduction: The (White) Child in the Landscape On the first page of Stories van Bergplaas (Stories of Mountain Farm), wellknown South African children’s author Alba Bouwer (1920-2010) paints an idyllic pastoral scene: Bramie, a ten-year-old boy, is the son of a farmer. He is sent on an errand to take coffee and rusks1 to his father who is working in the vineyard together with labourers. He pauses briefly beneath a big plum tree, from where he sees “the house and the cellar and the orange grove that begins right on the other side of the green steel gate stand beckoning and warm in the sun; the mountain stream that jumps out from high up the hill, and runs past the house to the vineyards, can only be seen shimmering through the oak trees here and there.”2 The illustration, by Katrine Harries,3 that accompanies the text, partially illustrates the scene described by Bouwer (Figure 18). Bramie, pictured in the foreground, is framed by the majestic plum tree, and in the background the vineyard and the mountain can be seen. Walking briskly, basket in hand, he looks up towards the sky; his gaze is open and relaxed. He is alone, yet safely enclosed by a familiar scene, which can also be described as picturesque. Indeed, in this book, and other similar titles by Bouwer,4 the ease and safety of rural life for white farmers in apartheid South Africa is rendered nostalgically, and the presence of black labour in the landscape is naturalised through its invisibility. South African children’s literature and the illustrations contained therein cannot be described as innocent, or devoid of any hidden meaning, as some authors suggest.5 Indeed, they form part of the white supremacist project of Afrikaner nationalism during apartheid, and assist in advocating a way of life
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