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Fiction is a very good way of exploring reality, especially different viewpoints. I tend to do a lot of research before I create a story and characters that are fictional. So my stories are true in the sense that everything that happens could happen. That was why at the beginning of Journey to Jo’burg there are two press cuttings about real children who made incredible journeys to find their mothers.
Another baby has died in the village and Naledi knows that her little sister Dineo might die too. But what can she do? Their grandmother has no money and there are no doctors in their village. So Naledi makes up her mind. She will have to get Mma who works more than 300 kilometres away in Johannesburg. The only way to let her know was to get to the big road and walk. So Naledi and her brother Tiro did just that… was one of the first books to portray life as it actually was in apartheid South Africa. Both then as contemporary fiction and now as a historical novel, it tells the story of children who must show enormous courage in the face of injustice Grace helps them find their mother’s workplace and offers them a place to spend the night in Soweto. When Naledi and Tiro find their mother, they learn she is a maid for a wealthy white family. Their mother is able to get time off, beginning the next day, to take her children home and help Dineo. Published during the height of Apartheid in the mid-1980s, this book was banned in South Africa until 1990. This would be a wonderful book to use to help students think globally about issues of power and class. It could also be the basis for doing a comparison between Apartheid and segregation in the U.S.I am interested in children who struggle against injustice and other difficulties wherever they are. Over the years I have learned about Nigeria through friends and some very fine writers. However the soldiers who stole power for many years destroyed much that was good, including people who spoke out against them. After they executed the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, I began to think about a story which involved the children of an outspoken journalist. I wanted to explore how these children would cope with being thrown from a comfortable family in Lagos to becoming – overnight – refugees alone in London. PS I decided to write my review under this edition, although it is marked ”ebook”, because it matches the actual cover of the book I have. When I sent two copies of my first children’s book to nephews and nieces in South Africa in 1985, they never received the parcel. Instead, my sister-in-law received a letter telling her that the books had been seized and banned. If you have read The Help, this is an equivalent book for children. The period is South Africa's apartheid years, and while I'm rating four for writing, I'm rating another star for the depiction of tendencies towards popular activism and bringing about change. I also like that there is a simple map. I used this book within my Year 4 literacy lessons and I thought it was a great way to get the children aware of what was happening in South Africa in the time of the Apartheid. It opened up great discussions and the children were wanting to ask questions relating to it. We were able to complete a number of activities relating to the book such as, writing a diary entry as if they were Naledi, thinking of different items they could take on their journey and doing a conscience alley and role play by giving advice on whether Naledi and Tiro should go.
I can only guess because the government didn’t give any reasons. One likely reason was that half of the book’s royalties were going to a banned organisation, the British Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, that was helping the families of political prisoners. The next day, Naledi and Tiro travel with Mma by train to their village. At Naledi’s asking, Mma tells how hard her life is. Once in the village, Nono watches Tiro, and Mma and Naledi take Dineo to the hospital. They must wait all day to see the doctor. After Dineo is kept in the hospital for three days, Mma is able to take her home. I start with writing notes on scraps of paper as well as beginning a notebook. This is my ‘first ideas’ stage. When researching, I talk to people, visit places, take photographs, read and so on. Burn My Heart, for instance, came out of two visits to Kenya. The seeds of the novel began to emerge during my first visit. By my second visit, I was much more focused, wanting to see particular landscapes, places and people. By this stage I was already thinking about my plot. Although my plot may change a bit as I write, it is important for me to have a sense of the shape of the whole story and how I intend to tell it. Afterwards comes the actual writing – usually draft after draft! Then editing – by myself and with my editor. I often ask a few people to whom I have spoken while researching if they will read my story and comment. This helps me get a bit of distance from what I’ve written. Altogether, it’s a long slow process – but very satisfying in the end. Beverley Naidoo (a white child) got a vaccine against diphteria, the children of the woman helping her family did not get this chance...
But those children who marched in the streets don’t want to be like us...learning in school just how to be servants. They want to change what is wrong...even if they must die! The author Beverley Naidoo has an interesting life story: born into a white family in South Africa, she took part in the anti-apartheid movement as a student, was jailed for 8 weeks, then left the country for the UK. She married a man from Indian descent: their union would have been ”a crime” under the apartheid laws (I'm guessing like Trevor Noah's parents'). Naidoo sent this book to family in South Africa, the book was forbidden (”undesirable publication”). At the end of Out of Bounds (where each story is set in a different decade) there is a factual time line giving real events and an interested reader can explore connections. When I sent two copies of my first children’s book to nephews and nieces in South Africa in 1985, they never received the parcel. Instead, my sister-in-law received a letter telling her that the books had been seized and banned. However Journey to Jo’burg soon found its way into many different countries, in English and in translations, so that hundreds of thousands of children elsewhere were soon reading it. It was only after the release of Nelson Mandela from jail that the book was unbanned. Beverley Naidoo grew up in apartheid South Africa. As a student, she protested against it and in 1965 was exiled for her participation. She came to England, her father’s home country, and decided to write Journey to Jo’burg based on the experiences she had seen and lived through.
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