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The first free elections in South Africa's history were held in 1994. Within a year legislation was drafted to create a Truth and Reconcilliation Commission to establish a picture of the gross human rights violations committed between 1960 and 1993. It was to seek the truth and make it known to the public and to prevent these brutal events ever happening again. From 1996 and over the following two years South Africans were exposed almost daily to revelations about their traumatic past. Antije Krog's full account of the Commission's work using the testimonies of the oppressed and oppressors alike is a harrowing and haunting book in which the voices of ordinary people shape the course of history.
WINNER OF SOUTH AFRICA'S SUNDAY TIMES ALAN PATON AWARDIn the year following South Africa's first democratic elections, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to investigate human rights abuses committed under the apartheid regime. Presided over by God's own diplomat, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the first hearings of the commission were held in April 1996. During the following two years of hearings, South Africans were daily exposed to traumatic revelations and public testimony about their traumatic past, and--like the world that looked on--continued to discover that the relationship between truth and reconciliation is far more complex than they had ever imagined.
Antjie Krog, a prominent South African poet and journalist, led the South African Broadcasting Corporation team that for two years reported daily on the hearings. Like the Truth Commission itself, Krog's Country of My Skull gives central prominence to the power of the testimony of the victims, combining the reportage skills of the journalist with the poet's ability to let previously unheard voices emerge with their stories. Extreme forms of torture, abuse and state violence were the daily fare of the Truth Commission. Many of those involved with its proceedings, including Krog herself, suffered personal stresses--ill health, mental breakdown, dissolution of relationships--in the face of both the relentless onslaught of the truth, and the continuing subterfuges of unrelenting perpetrators.
Krog's painful but precise account captures the essential character of the Truth Commission; that it was not a court convened to expose and punish culpability, but a forum for the new, still deeply divided, nation to bare its soul. Many, including clinical psychologist Nomfundo Walaza have argued that the creation of guilt was not the real purpose of the commission: "In essence we are dealing here with a definition of humanity…whites with their self-centred, selfish, capitalistic character have never been able to fathom the essence of humanity." Trying to fathom the essence of humanity, the depth of the voices of ordinary people, her country, and her self, is at the core of Krog's remarkable and uniquely challenging account. --Rachel HolmesThe first free elections in South Africa's history were held in 1994. Within a year legislation was drafted to create a Truth and Reconcilliation Commission to establish a picture of the gross human rights violations committed between 1960 and 1993. It was to seek the truth and make it known to the public and to prevent these brutal events ever happening again. From 1996 and over the following two years South Africans were exposed almost daily to revelations about their traumatic past. Antije Krog's full account of the Commission's work using the testimonies of the oppressed and oppressors alike is a harrowing and haunting book in which the voices of ordinary people shape the course of history.
WINNER OF SOUTH AFRICA'S SUNDAY TIMES ALAN PATON AWARD
