Childhoods to surprise, intrigue and delight

Arja Salafranca in conversation with Adrian Hadland*

Adrian Hadland recently edited Childhood - South Africans recall their past, a book which offers a unique and diverse perspective of childhood in South Africa. This book showcases the writing of the country's finest authors and personalities, all peering back through the mists of time, in an attempt to recall their own youth.

Arja Salafranca finds out a little more about Adrian in the interview that follows.

Click on book cover to buy

Childhood  -  South Africans recall their past
Edited by Adrian Hadland
Publisher: The Penguin Group (SA) (Pty) Ltd
ISBN: 014302471X
Publishing Date: 2005/07/31
Format: Trade paperback
Price: was R140.00 on kalahari.net

1. You started your career in journalism; please elaborate a bit on the papers you have worked on here and overseas.

   My first newspaper was the Weekly Mail, which I joined in November 1986, only a few months after it had been started. It was banned on several occasions during my three years there and was at constant loggerheads with the state. It was an exciting way to begin a career. I left in 1989 to take up postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford and returned to South Africa in 1991. While overseas I did some work for The Guardian in London and was also an education reporter for the Houston Chronicle in Texas. On my return to South Africa I joined Business Day, for whom I worked as a local government reporter, Pretoria bureau reporter, Pretoria bureau chief and then parliamentary correspondent from the period 1991 to 1996. I moved to the Sunday Independent as a senior writer in 1996 before joining the Cape Argus as political editor in 1999. I left full-time journalism in 2002 when I went to the Human Sciences Research Council.

2. You're currently chief research specialist at the HSRC. Please tell me something about your work there.

   I am doing largely, though not exclusively, media-related research, tracking the impact and role of the media in our new democracy. I have done research on the emerging community media sector, edited a book entitled Changing the Fourth Estate: Essays on South African journalism (HSRC Press, 2005), and am currently completing a research project on the establishment of local television in South Africa.

3. What do you think of South African journalism? Do you think South African journalists take enough risks in their writing; or not enough risks?

   I think South Africa has a long and proud history of courageous, excellent and pathbreaking journalism. There are certainly some who are taking risks, not always successfully. Part of my brief is to bolster excellence and improve access to the media, as a high-quality, diverse media is good for democracy.

4. Where did the idea for Childhood originate? How did you go about choosing the pieces? There seems to be a fairly wide mix of voices and experiences, most known, but some unknown, but what about those you left out?

   There is an interesting connection between autobiographical writing and journalism. Both purport to be non-fiction; both implicitly grapple with memory, with truth and with objectivity and/or subjectivity. I was looking to explore this connection in my PhD (I have an honours degree in African Literature from Wits), to use a critical methodology from one to examine the other, and vice versa. In the end, my PhD changed direction. I had intended to do one chapter of my PhD on autobiographical accounts of childhood. At an informal meeting on another project, Penguin expressed an interest in publishing an anthology of South African autobiographical writing about childhood. And that is what came about. I explain the selection process in more detail in the introduction to the book, but essentially I looked at a couple of thousand published, South African, autobiographical texts. Of these only a few hundred dealt with childhood in any substantial way. Of the few hundred, barely 70 or 80 were of sufficient quality and interest. I wanted the collection to reflect a wide range of South African experience over more than two centuries, but I also wanted the accounts to surprise, intrigue and delight readers. With these criteria, the best 30 largely chose themselves and were included in the anthology.

5. Why did you decide only to select excerpts from published autobiographies instead of also commissioning essays on childhood?

   You have to start somewhere, and when you get into the business of choosing people and then commissioning material, it adds a whole new layer of administration, time and cost. Using published autobiographies simply made the project doable.

6. Why focus on childhood at all? Do you have a special interest in childhood, the way events shape us as adults?

   Most countries fail to take notice of their children’s understanding of the world. Some are now trying to reverse this. In South Africa, just look at the massive role children have played in shaping our nation: the ANC Youth League in the 1940s and 1950s, Sharpeville and the growth of Black Consciousness in the 1960s, Soweto in ’76, the school boycotts and resistance of the 1980s. Virtually every decade for the past half century has been defined by the actions of our children. While this anthology uses adults’ recollections, it takes a small step towards restoring the visibility of the youth in the amazing journey of South African history.

   I also have a special interest in writing for children and have published four historical biographies for kids (on Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Thabo Mbeki and Napoleon Bonaparte).

   Finally, I have a beautiful two-year-old son, Nicholas, and watching him grow up has been one of the most profound experiences of my life.

7. Besides childhood, did you find a common theme emerging in this book as you selected the excerpts?

   I found many common themes, strangely crossing generations, genders, races and even the centuries: courage and strength in the face of adversity; a vivid sense of justice and injustice; great pride in community; and an instinctive grasp of irony and humour.

8. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood, according to a popular cliché. True? False? What are your views on this?

   It is true that our memories of childhood frequently change as we get older. We get things mixed up, we forget things, we add stuff in that we may have seen later in a family movie. We imagine our childhood differently depending on our mood or on our reason for remembering. But while the specific details of our remembered childhoods may be malleable, it seems unlikely that what was generally experienced as unhappy and cruel may become happy and carefree by accentuating or confusing elements of what took place. I’m not sure exactly what the cliché means, but it sounds false at a general level.

9. What are your thoughts on autobiographical writing in South Africa? Is it popular among readers? If so, why do you think that is the case? What do you think of the quality of autobiographies emerging?

   I think there is something quite fascinating going on in autobiographical writing in South Africa. We are combining modes and genres in unusual and unique ways. Autobiography was already marked by a range of types (like memoirs, diaries and life writing), but South Africans have added new combinations. JM Coetzee writes his autobiography in the third person; Breyten Breytenbach adds in sheer fantasy; Elinor Sisulu recently published a double biography of her in-laws (Albertina and Walter) that included her own autobiographical recollections; the biography of Oliver Tambo (by Luli Calinicos) includes large sections of Tambo’s own memoirs.

   The end of apartheid has spawned a deluge of autobiographical and memory-driven narratives, not least in the thousands of people who gave testimony to the Truth Commission. This great outpouring of memory and of history is arguably one of the reasons we have made a go of the new South Africa. It is also arguably a good starting-point for uncovering the features of our new, shared identity.

10. Adrian, what was your own childhood like? Did you have a happy, sad, traumatic, average childhood?

    I had a very privileged childhood, not only due to the material comforts, but because of the loving and stable environment. I grew up in Hong Kong and lived there for my first 11 years. My father was the island’s chief town planner, a high-rise architect trying to house and provide water to 5 million people living on a small rock in the South China Sea. I grew up during the Vietnam War and this served as a constant backdrop. As a family we were frequent visitors to refugee camps to assist with the human cost of the conflict. My mother also headed an organisation that cared for prisoners and helped them reintegrate back into society. I spent many a weekend as a child on the beaches of island prisons, fishing and swimming with my brother while my mother cared for the inmates.

11. Who are some of your favourite authors?

    Janet Fitch (White Oleander), Milan Kundera (Unbearable Lightness of Being), Umberto Eco (Foucault's Pendulum), Norman Mailer (Harlot's Ghost), Truman Capote (In Cold Blood), Hunter S Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), Jack Kerouac (On the Road), JRR Tolkien (Lord of the Rings).

12. What are you working on now?

    I am aiming to try and finish my PhD by the end of 2006 (on the South African print media, 1994–2004) and have various media-related projects and books on the go at present.

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