It's not necessary for interactive fiction to have images. Don't feel pressured to do that. I like to experiment for my own reasons and because what I'm doing in some cases are early experiments in pushing boundaries for later but if it's not something you're comfortable with then don't feel like you have to. There are specific kinds of people who play interactive fiction games and they want to interact with a good story.
This has a good story. It was a bit difficult for me to read in places because I'm a vegetarian and theoretical animal pacifist but I understand that this is fiction so I just pushed through those bits. I enjoyed the rest and it was cool to have something infused with South African culture.
I did not like the animated text. I found it distracting. There are ways that it can be implemented better and it enhances the text and I know that's what you were going for but it didn't work for me. "Follow" was particularly frustrating and I can imagine that there are some people who would find it impossible to click because they don't have much dexterity. (Also, I wonder how blind gamers would experience that text moving around.)
On the whole though this was good and I really liked the ending.
Some technical points - make a link at the end that goes back to the first passage so it's easy to play again for those who want to. I ended up stuck with a session cookie that wouldn't let me restart the game when I refreshed the tab and I had to close the tab and open a new one to be able to restart the game. I'd also suggest making your visited links the same colour as your fresh clickable links as otherwise it hints at where you've been in the story already.
Also, I know what LifeOnGaming Studios was talking about with the Grootslang returning. I think it goes like this. Start game. Rise. Wait. Stab. Go right down the dark tunnel. Go further. Return. Grootslang is alive again. In fact, any time you go right and come back it seems to come back to life.