Antjie Krog: Poetry breeds sensibility, understanding

Kurniawan Hari and A. Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Country of My Skull
Antjie Krog
Vintage, November 1999
304 pp
One of the participants in the Teater Utan Kayu International Literary Biennale 2005 is Antjie Krog, an acclaimed white South African writer and radio journalist who covered the activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission following the abolition of apartheid in 1994.

Born on Oct. 23, 1952, she has produced numerous works, including poetry anthology Down to My Last Skin (2000), the non- fiction Country of My Skull (1998) and novel Account of A Murder (1997).

Krog is a friendly and energetic person, as was apparent during a recent interview with The Jakarta Post's Kurniawan Hari and A. Junaidi at Wisma PGI, a colonial-style home stay in Central Jakarta.

Following are excerpts of Krog's thoughts on poetry, socio- political conditions in her home country and how the two are intertwined:

Question: You have written novels, poems and plays in Afrikaans and in English. When was your first foray into writing?

Answer: When I was very young, I kept a diary ... when I was six. And I wrote good essays in school, but it was only in high school when I started with poetry.

Then, I published my first book when I was 17. It was poetry. It was about school life, politics and about being young.

I wrote poetry in my mother tongue -- Afrikaans. I have published for 20 years only poetry, only in Afrikaans.

After 1994, after the new government, I became a journalist for a radio assigned to cover activities in Parliament. They drafted a law for the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

After that, I wrote books in English about the Truth Commission, and prose... Still, I publish literature in Afrikaans.

Many of your works take people's suffering as their theme. Do they reflect the condition of the South African people?

Yes..., we are a Third World country and there is a lot of poverty and injustice. Suffering has resulted from all that. We had an old government that was racist and unfair.

Now, we have a new government, but we need to keep vigilant so that the new government does not become like the old one. It could happen, but I think it is progressing quite well at this stage so far.

Do you see any similarities between social conditions in South Africa and in Indonesia?

From the little that I know ... we were both colonized countries. These two countries are trying to recover from colonialism. But in our case, the oppressors were Africans, not from another country.

It was (first) British colonialism, but after that it was white domination. Indigenous African lived 300 years in oppression.

So what makes it an interesting time is that we put on the table new voices that have been oppressed under colonialism -- especially from women -- in different languages.

The other thing that looks similar (between the two countries) ... is a mixture of wealth and poverty. There are big houses here, but there is also poverty.

Perhaps you know that Indonesia is preparing to set up a kind of truth and reconciliation commission itself. What was key to the success of such a commission in South Africa?

It is important to remember that South Africa was the 18th truth commission in the world -- there have been many commissions; people have adapted the patterns.

The South African commission has two new things. The first is ... the victims can testify publicly. In Argentina and Chile, testimony was closed to the public.

The second new thing is the individualized amnesty. In Argentina and Chile, you got blanket amnesty, so the perpetrators all get amnesty, the army amnesty and the police amnesty.

In South Africa we say no. Amnesty is for the individual.

Another important thing ... is the moral authority of the (commission) chairperson. It must be a person that is fearless of politicians, of political pressure, of family relations, of race, of history.

He must have a very clear moral code -- to explain this is right and this is wrong.

The other thing is to treat (all) victims the same. It is very different from the Holocaust in Germany (where) the Jews are the only victims. Germans, Russians and British do not have victims.

How about treatment provided for the victims?

South Africa treats white and black victims the same.

My child died, let's say, fighting for apartheid. Your child died fighting against apartheid. But we sit together, we are mothers, we grieve, we lost our sons. We are treated the same by the commissions. This is very important.

The mass media also plays an important role in making people aware of the stories. People do not want to hear sad stories -- you must be aware of that. It is very hard to listen to suffering. People like to listen to amnesty stories, the perpetrators, how they kill or how they burn. These are a kind of "sexy story".

But suffering takes from you. You don't want to hear it. So the media must bring those stories out to the people and make them hear.

It is very hard, very difficult to do, but it is important.

Who was in charge of this process? Who was trusted to lead the reconciliation?

My theory is that the leadership in all of this must never come from the perpetrators. It comes from the victims.

The victims offer forgiveness before they are asked. It is different from the (situation between) the Germans and the Jews. The Germans wanted to be forgiven, but the Jews said they can't.

In South Africa, it is different. Black people say: "I do not live alone on this earth, in this country. You (white people) are no longer human. I want you and need you to become human again, so let me help you."

For me, that is such an enormous contribution of Africa to the 21st century. It is beyond understanding. The white people, especially, still do not understand that.

How do you view the policy or the perspective of the South African media at that time?

The loyalty to watch the truth commission by the whole media corps was quite remarkable. However, there were some problems.

The radio had a specific team to do all the reportings in different languages. The radio broadcast the testimony of people in their mother tongues to express their feelings or their fears... We had a team that traveled with the commission, so we had better information. After a year, we knew the legislation, the contact and the reporting.

You pick up the latest thing, a rape, a man's testimony about his wife. You pick up new trends.

Newspapers have different policies. Some of them have special pages while others treat the news simply in a regular column.

The momentum of the truth commission became so big. Every day, there were stories on the front page. (The media) competed with each other for better reporting.

You traveled with the Truth Commission to get a better understanding -- could you be more elaborate?

Actually, the newspapers could have done (many things) that they did not do, which I think was their big mistake. They did not look at the testimony and the process from the psychological aspect; they did not study the effect of trauma.

Trauma makes victims unable to testify well. Sometimes, the victims say they cannot remember. One victim can clearly describe the situation -- the white road, birds on the grass and a gate with big lock -- but he cannot remember the incidents.

The day after, the newspapers write that the man is lying. The man can remember the situation, but how can they not remember the incident?

We only realized later that if you do something terrible, the brain cannot live with it, it bursts, and it only gives back what you can live with.

It is a bit difficult for a radio to broadcast, but newspapers have time to look into it. Look for second- and third-layer reporting. (Unfortunately), everybody just sees its first face: testimony, reporting, testimony, reporting.

There is a huge area that the newspapers could have gone into it, (but) because there is only one man reporting, there is no time to go deeper.

How do your literature and your political views influence each other?

I do not want to think too deeply about that because it depends on what you (think) a poet should be doing. If you view a poet as just about being a rebel, it is about rebellion -- being angry and attacking power. I thought this was what I did when I was young.

I have changed. I want a better society. Sometimes, you need to attack authority, but I find at this stage, to attack authority is too early.

We need to formulate what we want because we live apart in separate moralities.

(South Africa) is a country with a fractured morality -- whites have a particular morality, blacks have a particular morality, Christians have a particular morality and African religions have a particular morality.

...My thinking is that as white people, we have had 300 years of saying what we want.

Maybe it's time to shut up now and allow those who have never spoken before to speak -- what it is that they want? what kind of country do they want? And then we can start interacting.

So, my writing has changed from being a protest to (being) a more constructive one. Everyone -- or great writers in the West -- will tell you that this is bad. It is like the death of good literature. I do not care. I want a better country,

After years of living through these changes, from a racist government to the new one, what is your fear today?

My fear is that we won't manage to better everybody's life. After 10 years down the line, people look and say: "Listen, I am still poor, I still don't have food, I don't have clothes, I am poor, I have nothing."

And here are the white and a few black elite who have everything. I (would have) wasted my energy. This must stop now.

We will have enormous problems in South Africa if peoples' lives don't improve.

The priority must always be: How we improve their lives; not to enrich the few, make people have food, make them have quality of life and not suffer in poverty.

I fear violence.

With all your activities, how do you spend your leisure time?

I live and work alone and I do yoga. I am a big yoga fan.

Do you have a special message for the Indonesian audience through your participation in this event?

Come and listen to poetry, because poets teach you to see your life clearer and live with awareness of the senses.

They say that an unexamined life is not worth living. Poetry brings you there to live clearer. Everyone should come.