A Postcolonial Ecocritical Reading of Zakes Mda’s The Whale Caller and Helon Habila’s Oil on Water

Abstract

This paper explores environmental devastation in Africa as presented in the works of Zakes Mda’s The Whale Caller (2005) and Helon Habila's Oil on Water (2010). It also investigates how these novels portray the economic activities introduced by colonialism and how they negatively affect the achievement of sustainable development in both South Africa and Nigeria. The research employs a postcolonial ecocritical approach that examines the relationship between post-colonial land and humans and how, together, they form the environment. Therefore, the study analyzes the events and characters associated with environmental problems in the two narratives to critique the hegemony of the Western development discourse and to reveal its contradictions. The narrative highlights the ecological crisis by drawing attention to how uneven development impacts people, flora, and fauna. This study contributes to the ongoing scholarly discussions that focus on the development discourse produced by the neocolonial ideology and questions its viability for the sustainable wellbeing of postcolonial communities and lands.