Bridget Pitt speaks about her historical novel ‘Eye Brother Horn’

Bridget Pitt is a South African writer and environmental activist. Her previous crime novel, The Unseen Leopard, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and other awards.

In her new novel Eye Brother Horn, set in 1870s Natal, Moses, a Zulu foundling, and Daniel, a white missionary’s child, are raised as brothers in a world intent on making them enemies. As tensions between them mount, it leads to anger and, eventually, to violent death. Eye Brother Horn is a gripping and moving historical novel that addresses identity and kinship against a clash of cultures.

In this interview for The Big Thrill, Michael Sears asks Pitt how she came to write Eye Brother Horn, the depths of her research, and what’s next.

The backstory of Eye Brother Horn is the devastation of the area by the British colonists who not only grab the land, clear it for sugar cane and press the local people into working for them, but also destroy the wildlife of the area partly for profit but also for fun. What persuaded you to write a historical novel set in that location at that time?

I first started exploring the area about 10 years ago with an interest in writing a novel on rhino poaching, which was rapidly escalating. The more I looked into it, the more I realised the genesis of the rhino poaching crisis (and of most contemporary ecological and socioeconomic crises) lay in the colonial era.

Colonialism in South Africa (first Dutch, then British) took place over three centuries, but the process in Natal and Zululand happened rapidly. A small group of English pioneers arrived in 1824. Initially, they relied heavily on the patronage of the Zulu kings, first Shaka, then Dingane followed by Mpande. The British annexed the coastal area from the Boers in 1843. This was tolerated by the Zulu monarchy as the British provided a bulwark against the Boers, who were encroaching from the western interior. There were also a number of tribal groups who had been driven south of the Thukela River, and the British helped to subdue them.

This balance of forces shifted rapidly between 1850 and 1879 (the period covered by the novel). The British imposed increasing laws and taxes on the tribes south of the Thukela, arrested tribal leaders who did not conform, and in 1879 British troops invaded Zululand. After months of intense battles, with heavy casualties on both sides, the British defeated the Zulu impi and gutted the power of the Zulu kingdom and rulers.

This rapid shift highlighted the destructive affect of colonialism on the indigenous communities. It also highlighted the devastating affect of colonialism on the natural landscape, on the wild plants and animals, and on the relationship between the indigenous people and the natural world. Old growth trees in forests were felled to build ships and homes, coastal forests and grasslands were cleared for sugar cane, herds of antelope and buffalo were displaced or killed for their pelts and sport, and rhinos and elephants were driven to local extinction all within 30 years. The scale on which wild animals were killed was staggering.

Personal diaries and accounts also revealed a rapid shift in attitude among the British settlers. While many came with some sympathy for the indigenous inhabitants, within a few years this hardened to extreme racism to justify the theft of land, forced labour and impoverishment of the local people.

For these reasons, I felt that this was an ideal geographical location and historical period to explore some of the social, psychological and ecological legacy of colonialism.

Click here to continue reading their conversation.

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