Carol’s Column

Antjie's stunning book convinced me SA will work

Sometimes something happens to change the way you think. The change may be dramatic or imperceptible, it may touch you lightly or take root in your inner core. This past long weekend, such a thing happened when I read a book. A smallish 285-page book so large in concept, so moving, so profound that sometimes, while reading I forgot to breathe.

“Country of My Skull,” I said to the book store assistant, “I can't find the book by Antjie Krog anywhere.”

“It's over there,” she pointed. The young man beside me in the queue smiled. “Her name is not AYEntjie,” he said, his Afrikaans accent strong.

“The correct pronunciation is ‘ANTjie’,” he smiled again.

“I'm sorry,” I replied. “Whenever I speak Afrikaans I always mispronounce words and names. Dis paar vir die course.”

“It doesn't matter,” he replied, “at least you try.”

I bought Krog's book Country of My Skull about her two years of reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Had I thought about it, I should know how to pronounce her first name. I've heard it often enough on radio as ANTjie Samuel. I've seen her speak, heard her read her poetry and read her in the Mail & Guardian.

So I opened this book and fell into the recent history of our country and once caught among the pages, couldn't escape.

It takes courage to confront in her own way things that are so evil, so terrible, so hurtful they can barely be comprehended. Whatever you may believe, whether you agree or disagree with its being there, the Truth Commission has done exactly this and Krog with meticulous honesty and true literary brilliance has written the story.

Across the pages I slid through the establishment of the Truth Commission Bill to the actual setting up of the commission and the daily hearings. It was like being there and sometimes the reality of the thing, the pain of what happened became too much and I'd break away to boil an egg, slip out to the supermarket to buy bread and avocado pears.

Then once again I'd become part of necklacings and torture, beatings and murders, read of fly-in international journalists (experts after two days).

Of a smiling queen in a denim skirt and - can it be skoentjies from Stuttafords? Or a bronze boere-orkes in Pietersburg.

I tried to distance myself from accusation and amnesty, from the explanation of attitudes between blacks and whites, English and Afrikaners, blacks and blacks, Afrikaners and Afrikaners. From those who murdered to those who nourished. From parents who'd lost children and parents who'd killed the children of others. Ordinary yet remarkable people inhabited each page, some humbly noble, others monstrous.

Krog spares nobody, least of all herself. In their own words, people incriminate and are incriminated. So what, you might think? Who cares?

For me, she clarifies much of what I saw as the sometimes seeming bumblings of the commission. With skill and sensitivity she's woven a tapestry of truth through happenings, her own observations, the stories of others.

Precisely because it is often the words of victims and perpetrators she quotes, a unique insight is gained into a South Africa which exists and despite all, still stumbles hopefully forward.

Lest you think this sounds altogether harrowing, I should mention tragedy is interspersed with piercing humour.

Before I read Antjie's book I was filled with gloom. Today I have such optimism that I want to yell it from the top of the Union Buildings. After intense immersion in these pages, I know South Africa will work.

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