Antjie Krog is a prominent South African poet, activist, and writer. Born into an Afrikaner family of writers, she grew up on a farm, attending primary and secondary school in the area. In 1970, at the height of John Vorster’s apartheid years, she penned an anti-apartheid poem for her school magazine: Gee vir my ‘n land waar swart en wit hand aan hand, vrede en liefde kan bring in my mooi land[2] (Give me a land where black and white hand in hand, Can bring peace and love to my beautiful land) scandalising her conservative Afrikaans-speaking community and bringing the attention of the national media to her parents’ doorstep.
For two years, reporting as Antjie Samuel, she contributed to the radio programme AM Live with items on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Of the commission she said:
If its interest is linked only to amnesty and compensation, then it will have chosen not truth, but justice. If it sees truth as the widest possible compilation of people’s perceptions, stories, myths and experiences, it will have chosen to restore memory and foster a new humanity, and perhaps that is justice in its deepest sense. She is best known for her book Country of My Skull, which chronicled the TRC.
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