Ingrid Jonker and the new South Africa

Ingrid Jonker and the new South Africa

Each group in South Africa has made an indelible mark on the nation and cannot be dispensed with. To imagine a Cape Town without Muslims (around 300 000) is not possible; they are an integral part of this city and have been here since the beginning of the 19^th century. Some radical black groups have certainly, not least in the heat of the struggle, wished whites to disappear into the sea (it used to be rhetoric of the PAC, the Pan Africanist Congress), but such sentiments seem to be something of the past. This is in particular the case with the Afrikaners. They should be the most despised ones as they no doubt constructed the apartheid ideology. But the great thing is that they are stuck with South Africa. They do not want to leave, while English speaking whites many a time always have had one foot up on the way back to England or some other English speaking country.

One should also add that while Afrikaners rightly can be said to have constructed apartheid it is equally true that a number of individuals within this community have stood out as strong supporters of justice for all rejecting any kind of racial prejudice.

One such Afrikaner was Dr Beyers Naudé; he became famous for breaking away from the elite within church and society which ruled the country with a firm hand according to apartheid legislation. He eventually joined a black reformed church but he always regarded himself as an Afrikaner and was proud of it.

In May this year a conference took place in Uppsala celebrating the life of Beyers Naudé. He was born hundred years ago and we celebrated his birth in May. A colleague of mine by the name Christo Lombard gave a lecture on Naudé’s understanding of reconciliation. Professor Lombard is also an Afrikaner. Bearing in mind Naudé taking pride in being an Afrikaner I later on asked Lombard, “do you see yourself as an Afrikaner?” The question apparently came unexpectedly, but the answer was no doubt in the affirmative. But afterward, a woman in the auditorium came up to us and said to me in no uncertain words that my question had been impertinent and pejorative!

Born in 1933 Ingrid Jonker grew up in northern Cape in a rural area and was early on giving proof of literary talent. She started writing poems already at the age of six. As almost all educated South Africans she spoke and wrote English quite well also. However, the Afrikaans language (die taal) was the language she grew up with. Afrikaans grew gradually out of the Dutch language on South African soil. Today there are more than eight million people having Afrikaans as the first language and less than half of these are whites. Ingrid Jonker is a fairly early example of how this language though small now is a language of many writers and poets. The formal grammar is simplified in relation to Dutch but instead Afrikaans has a wealth of idioms and expressions. It is a language that clearly defends its right to exist along with the dominating English and hopefully this state of affairs could affect/lead to the development and articulation especially in writing of the other official languages in South Africa, the remainders being of indigenous, African origin.

This short reflection is merely putting this writer into context. One needs to come back to her. She knew other writers like André Brink. She led in many ways an unhappy life and took her life in the waters outside Cape Town at the age of only 31.

She died then in 1964 at a time when Nelson Mandela barely had entered his 27 years in prison, the first long period being on Robben Island.

Ingrid Jonker had a sharp eye for how tragedy one day would be turned into triumph, how brutal death one day would be converted into unbending life. Nelson Mandela was aware of her writing, how early I do not know, but there is something in common here, Robben Island and the Atlantic side of Cape Town.

She had written a poem in 1960 that prophetically would tell about a new time and age, a time that was nigh in 1994, the year when Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the first democratically elected President of South Africa.

We have seen in different ways that Mandela made certain that also the Afrikaners were made to be felt at home in the new South Africa. Hence in his opening address in the parliament as President he quotes Ingrid Jonker’s poem “The child is not dead…”

Having stressed that many had given their lives for a new and free South Africa Mandela further says regarding Ingrid Jonker:

“The certainties that come with age tell me that among these we shall find an Afrikaner woman who transcended a particular experience and became a South African, an African and a citizen of the world. Her name was Ingrid Jonker… She was both an artist and a human being. In the midst of despair, she celebrated hope. Confronted by death, she asserted the beauty of life. In the dark days when all seemed hopeless in our country, when refused to hear her resonant voice, she took her own life. To her and others like her, we owe a debt to life itself. To her and others like her, we owe a commitment to the poor, the oppressed, the wretched and the despised. In the aftermath of the massacre at the anti-pass demonstration in Sharpville, she wrote ‘The child is not dead’” (President Mandela’s opening address in the parliament in Cape Town, 24 May 1994).

Here follows the poem in Afrikaans:

“Die kind is nie dood nie

Die kind lig sy vuiste teen sy moeder

Wat Afrika skreeu   skreeu die geur

Van vryheid en heide

In die lokasies van die omsingelde hart

Die kind lig sy vuiste teen sy vader

In die optog van die generasies

Wat Afrika skreeu  skreeu die geur

Van geregtigheid en bloed

In die strate van sy gewapende trots

Die kind is nie dood nie

Nòg by Langa nòg by Nyanga

Nòg by Orlando nòg by Sharpville

Nòg by die polisiestasie in Philippi;

Waar hy lê met a koeël deur sy kop

Die kind is die skaduwee van die soldate

Op wag met gewere sarasene and knuppels

Die kind is teenwoordig by alle vergaderings en wetgewings

Die kind loer deur die vensters van huise en in die harte van moeders

Die kind wat net wou speel in die son by Nyanga is orals

Die kind wat ‘n man geword het trek deur die ganse Afrika

Die kind wat ‘n reus geword het reis deur die hele wêreld

Sonder ‘n pas  (March 1960)”

(Ingrid Jonker, “Die kind wat dooegeskiet is deur soldate by Nyanga”, in Versamelde Werke. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2014, 81; see also English translation)