Country of My Skull

Country of My Skull (1998) by Antjie Krog is a 1998 nonfiction book by Antjie Krog about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).It is based on Krog's experience as a radio reporter, covering the Commission from 1996 to 1998 for the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The book explores the successes and failures of the Commission, the effects of the proceedings on her personally, and the possibility of genuine reconciliation in post-Apartheid South Africa. Country of My Skull blends poetry, prose, reporting, and verbatim testimony from the Commission one critic calls it "a hybrid work, written at the edges of reportage, memoir, and metafiction.It was Krog's first work in English. She drafted it in Afrikaans and translated it for publication. It was edited by Ivan Vladislavic.

Quotes

• And everyone wants to know: Who? Why? The victims ask the hardest of all the questions: How is it possible that the person I loved so much lit no spark of humanity in you?
  • [1]
• By not dealing with past human rights violations, we are not simply protecting the perpetrators' trivial old age ; we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.
  • [2]
• People thought that the Truth Commission would be this quick fix, this Rugby World Cup scenario, and that we would go through the process and fling our arms around each other and be blood brothers forevermore. And that is nonsense--absolute nonsense. The TRC is where the reality of this country is hitting home and hitting home very hard. And that is good. But there will be no grand release--every individual will have to devise his or her own personal method of coming to terms with what has happened.
  • [3]
• Every discussion opens up a new problem area”
  • Page 9
• Truth Commission Bill was signed into law by President Nelson Mandela on July 19, 1995”
  • Page 15
• the real beginning of the end of the apartheid”
  • Page 58
• a shift from individual tales to the collective, from victims to the masterminds, from the powerless to those in power”
  • Page 134
• the authorization of assassination, murder, torture, rape, assault”
  • Page 136
• I lay sole responsibility for that with F.W. de Klerk. De Klerk knew of the hit squads but [he] chose to do nothing about it”
  • Page 177
• given above in the exact words in which he spoke it”
  • Page 286
• new and chilling direction”
  • Page 271
• the marrow of my bones”
  • Page 277
• [O]ne black caller after another says: I vote ANC, but they have made a mistake”
  • Page 370
• The ANC has fought a just war and therefore could not have committed gross human-rights violations”
  • Page 370
• No one can destroy whites—they have survival in their bones. But for us, if we don’t stand together no matter what, we’ll be wiped out.
  • Chapter 1, Page 16
• It soon becomes clear that overseas journalists are interested only in the amnesty-seekers and whether there will be important politicians among them.”
  • Chapter 2, Page 19
• All the women are asked whether they feel there should be women on the commission. No man is asked whether he feels there should be women on the commission. Nobody is asked whether they feel there should be men on the commission.
  • Chapter 2, Page 23

External links

• Country of My Skull
• Goodreads
• supersummary