Country of My Skull

Antjie Krog

Muriel Smith is a Canadian woman who had had a long career as a politician, counsel\r and community activist. Coming from a conservative background, she recalls participating in her first demonstration in the 1970s. It was against Apartheid in South Africa. She has continued her interest in international affairs and regularly attends  sessions at the United nations where she works with non-governmental caucuses to critique the documents generated by the government representatives, always urging them to live up to their commitments on peace, human rights and social justice. 

The book is published by Random House U.K., Vantage

To say this book is a challenge is no under-statement. My advice is not to read this book unless you are prepared to have all your social, political, philosophical and moral bearings turned upside down, but hopefully back again.

Antjie Krog is an Afrikaans woman, poet and journalist, employed by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) radio station to cover South Africa’s historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). After Apartheid ended in 1990 with Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, an Interim Constitution was negotiated and the first democratically elected Parliament put in place. The TRC was legislated. Its mandate was to hear testimony from victims, determine perpetrator eligibility for amnesty,, and make recommendations to ensure the tragedies of Apartheid would never recur. Their work was to be done with full public transparency, not always the case with previous TRCs. Regrettably, the issue of reparations for victims was never clarified.

Ms Krog describes the complexities, tensions and political manoeuvering involved in legislating the mandate, establishing the membership and process of the TRC and its parallel Amnesty Commission (AC) The complexities can hardly be imagined. There were whites, the British with their sense of racial superiority, Afrikaans who had constructed the blatantly racist structure of Apartheid. There were blacks who had warred with other blacks, men and women of all ages who had experienced Apartheid in very different ways, rich and poor, beneficiaries and exploited, and members of all political parties – the African National Congress (ANC), the National Party (NP) and its splinter Conservative Party (CP, the South African Communist Party (SACP), the Pan African Congress (PAC) and Inkatha Freedom Party (IDF), to name the largest.

Rising above it all were the inspired, the indomitable President Nelson Mandela, and the appointed head of TRC, Archbishop Tutu. The first hearings were in 1996. They held in halls, large and small, all over South Africa. Victims, ordinary people with the most horrifying and disturbing personal stories, came forward. They were set at ease at the hearings by the encouraging and respectful Chairman, Archbishop Tutu, who paid attention to the smallest details, even to how the room should be arranged so the speakers would not feel intimidated. Tutu’s goal throughout was to forge a new and inclusive morality for all South Africans based on the stories unfolding during the hearings, stories of threats and intimidation,.murder, torture, unexplained disappearances of family members.

Gradually the Commission became a unified team as it responded to Tutu’s prayerful challenges to create this new and unifying morality. Polarized reactions all but dissolved before his gentle persuasion. Critically important sub-themes of transparency, democracy and accountability were introduced and re-introduced throughout the proceedings.     

The Amnesty Commission presented a different picture. It was structured along the adversarial lines of a traditional court room. This process presented many opportunities for delays, emotional expression, and embittered, unproductive name-calling. All of the proceedings of both Commissions were captured by the media in daily broadcasts and newspaper articles. The entire society was saturated for days, weeks, months and years with news from these two Commissions.

The compelling truth-telling of this narrative report is, however, only part of the book.  The other part is, in many ways, even more deeply compelling as Krog retells her personal struggles with the content, process and statements by Commissioners. She struggled to find meaning in the marathon processes as she searched her own past experience, her most profound beliefs, and her sense of identity as an Afrikaans woman. She observed the behaviour of the Afrikaans politicians who were the architects of Apartheid. Some of them provided evidence, while many others refuse even to participate. They are her people, her family, her community, so her internal tensions of divided loyalty increased alarmingly, and begin to affect her job performance, eventually culminating in an episode of mental and physical breakdown. 

Her personal confusion was matched by the growing confusion among the people of South Africa. As she digs deeply into herself and into all she knows about morality, philosophy and politics, she mirrors what many others must have been experiencing. She explores what she calls the culture of honour where the betrayal of the group leads to deep shame, and compares it to the culture of individual responsibility and accountability to the entire community with all its diversity ( a transformed ubuntu)  where wrongdoing leads to a sense of guilt, and hopefully, in time, remorse and recovery.

As the Commission on Amnesty treks throughout the Republic, it heard from the perpetrators of human rights abuses against blacks, perpetrators who were white like her,  English and Afrikaans, but there were also blacks abusing blacks with atrocities like the favoured method of  “burning tire necklacing”. The victims were also black and white, some with children, educated and uneducated people. The intransigents, too, who refused to testify were also whites and blacks, politicians, freedom fighters and ordinary citizens..

This Amnesty process culminates in hearings into the actions of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and her Foot Ball Club thugs. Allegations of murder and torture were made, and searing testimonies brought forward. In that instance, the abuse is of blacks by blacks. Those listening are torn between their loyalties to a black woman heroine they have revered and their need to have her acknowledge her wrongdoing and to express remorse. Her acknowledgements were vital if the spirit of the Truth and Reconciliation process was to be honoured, and the new morality envisioned by Tutu to have credibility. The haughty and imperious Winnie finally relented, ironically in response to Tutu’s heartfelt appeal to her honour. She stammers out the words: ”Something went dreadfully wrong. I am sorry.” So her loyalty to the group, the basis of her culture of honour, was broken by an appeal to her honour.

Specific hearings were also held for all the political parties. The ANC defends its actions as Prime Minister Mbeki continued to do, as part of a “just war”. Archbishop Tutu  countered with the latest tenets of international Human Rights Law which the ANC had helped to formulate (that there was a difference between a “just war” and the “use of unjust means.” ) Botha of the National Party persisted in his belief in racial superiority and the right to maintain law and order, but was finally revealed as nothing more than a “swaggering fool”.  Business had its special hearing, as did the churches, media, prisons,  women and youth.  Members of these groups show the same range of attitudes: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally for some acceptance. 

In the aftermath of lengthy court procedures being completed and five reports written and submitted, the underlying tensions of all the hearings remain: between black and white, rich and poor, rural and urban, ideology and religion. Also remaining was the challenge to move to a new morality. The personal and collective struggles to transcend their different pasts and the uncertainties of the future remain. But the TRC has completed its task, not the impossible task of discovering some magic formula that will usher in a new day, but the one it was established to achieve, to bring the secrets of the past into public view, never again to be excluded from public discourse.

Country of My Skull goes far beyond what the mind can grasp. It plumbs the depths of horror – the details of the iconic events of the killing of Steve Biko and of Stompie Seipei, the massacre at the Heidelberg Tavern, the fate of the Craddock Four, and many others. It also plumbs the depth of the human heart with all its potential for good and evil, suffering and hope. It finds eventually an uneasy truce in our very souls between long held moral and philosophical ideals, and the inescapable realities that confront us all as we struggle to live together in peace and justice.

This book will enlighten the reader about a remarkable historical period in the nation of South Africa, about the equally remarkable path they chose, however imperfectly realized, of convening a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, about its successes and failures, and about the impact on an individual who lived through it all. At first, she was an observer, a factual recorder of events. Then she became a human being wrestling with the most profound challenges to her sense of identity as an Afrikaans woman, but she concludes the account again at peace, but as a deeply committed South African.

Last update : 23-09-2008 14:29

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