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Summary: Reconciliation is a hard but wonderful road.
Review: Antjie Krog is an Afrikaner journalist and poet who followed South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission from beginning to end. In this book she is not so much reporting on and analyzing the work of the commission, but rather she is telling stories that demonstrate how the various stakeholders felt about the proceedings.It becomes clear that true and complete reconciliation of South Africa's alienated peoples is impossible, but at the same time one sees how beautiful and necessary the attempt can be. To summarize the theme of the book: When a society begins to realize the extent of its evils, what does it do? How can the past be left behind in favour of a free and informed future?
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Summary: An important book, full of sound and fury
Review: Antjie Krog's book is an attempt to come to terms with South Africa's past through the experience of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I'm not too sure whether she succeded in that attempt by the end of the book, but what is undeniable is that it makes the reader understand the power of narrative in trying to give order to the past, however chaotic this might have been. I found Krog's poetic style somewhat distracting, and, sometimes, she dwells on irrelevant details. However, her accounts of the many testimonies she attended while reporting on the TRC are oftentimes powerful and heartwrenching, and they deserve to be read by anyone interested in understanding what was South Africa under the apartheid regime. I highly recommend this book.
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Summary: CIVIC CATHARSIS
Review: Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa by Antjie Krog One of the greatest social laboratories of change in modern times was the collapse of apartheid and the birth of the modern democratic Republic of South Africa. Out of the civic catharsis embodied in this collapse and the subsequent racial and political somersault of South African society, a unique and classic venue for human rights, The South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), was created.
In this deeply moving book, Antjie Krog, South African poet and child of the Free State, has compiled a compelling record of the TRC. The reader will receive an immediate and powerful exposure to Bishop Edmund Tutu's Ubuntu theology (the harmony between individual and community) as an embodiment of the ancient African Weltganschauung (a person is human precisely in the community of other human beings).
Again, it is the poet who elucidates for the rest of us the heart of man-as-community. Utilizing a first-person dialogue within a keen observational and lovely prosaic style, Antjie Krog enables us to enter both the foreheads of perpetrators of violence and the hearts of its victims. It also includes rare insights into the indifference and guilt of both white and black citizens during the apartheid regime. In this chronicle of the TRC, we witness an abiding desire to expose the dark past in constructing the crucial accountability to future generations. This, as Antjie Krog so lovingly describes, is the miracle rebirth her "wide and woeful land."
This fascinating journaling of the petitions before the TRC - the angst in seeking a common unity - reveals a redeeming Phoenix of truth in the ashes of apartheid. Antjie Krog's unique documentation of the proceedings of the TRC is a valued record of modern South African history. This is a beautifully written and classic case-study of essential "transparency" in global constitutional democracy. Jess Maghan, Chester, Ct.
05 February 2002
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Summary: Insightful
Review: Here is a complex book that scratches the surface of a very complex ordeal; Apartheid. Krog gives a very personal report on the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission, a Committee charged with hearing the crimes of perpetrators in Apartheid and deciding on their amnesty respectively. Her language is very emotional at times, even suspiciously involved. You can sense in her writing her own struggle to explore the apathy of her own ethnicity, the white Afrikaaner, in the face of such atrocities. Overall, a very complex book. I couldn't put this one down and finished it in about 3 days. If you have an interest in Apartheid you may gain new insight on the matter after having read this.
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Summary: Unsettling stories from the apartheid amnesty hearings.
Review: I bought my copy of "The Country of My Skull" while on a trip to South AFrica in August, 1998. This is the first-hand observers view of the South African apartheid amnesty hearing in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu). This is a gripping and unsettling book. Hard to read because of the intensity of the tales that are retold by the author. But this is an important book because we learn again the extent of man's inhumanity to man. If you are interested in South Africa, politics, racial relationships, or human struggle against injustice, this is a "must read" book. Nothing like it has ever been published.
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Summary: Unsettling stories from the apartheid amnesty hearings.
Review: I bought my copy of "The Country of My Skull" while on a trip to South AFrica in August, 1998. This is the first-hand observers view of the South African apartheid amnesty hearing in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu). This is a gripping and unsettling book. Hard to read because of the intensity of the tales that are retold by the author. But this is an important book because we learn again the extent of man's inhumanity to man. If you are interested in South Africa, politics, racial relationships, or human struggle against injustice, this is a "must read" book. Nothing like it has ever been published.
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Summary: Very Important Piece of Work
Review: I found myself crying very often when i read this book. the subject matter is very burdening as well as confronting. Krog's insights are intelligent as well as astute. It is very well written and it is a gift to south africa that she has written this. This is sensitive and human journalism/history at its best.
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Summary: A powerful account of the TRC by an Afrikaner poet/writer.
Review: I purchased this book in South Africa in March, 1998. I lived in Cape Town in 1984 and 1985 and was surrounded by the emerging events that ultimately led to the demise of Apartheid. This book is powerful since it is written by an Afrikaner author who not only relates the horrors presented before the Truth & Reconciliation Commission but also shares her own struggle to reconcile herself with the legacy of her country. This will be a challenge for the reader without first hand knowledge of Aparthied South Africa. Anyone who wants to struggle to understand such a place must read this book.
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Summary: Piercing Sorrow
Review: Skull is a great companion to Desmond Tutu's " No Future without Forgiveness". Where Tutu shines hope, Antijie Krog allows the anguish space. The framing of the tragic stories within the bookends of the Truth Tribunal hearings gives the events a balance and credibility. Where Tutu amazes the reader with ubuntu, Krog allows the raw emotions of grief,denial and vengeance to peek through the telling. I arrive at the same conclusion through Krog's and Tutu's writing about this transition/transformation of a nation. If we had experienced, what they have experienced - we wouldn't exhibit the same generousity and forgiveness. There is another lesson to be learned.
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Summary: cry my bereaved country
Review: Thankyou Antjie. You clarify a brave, extraordinary venture into reconciliation as a serious option to persistent conflict. It must have been a harrowing journey for you. I hope I meet and thank you someday. Ive worked throughout Southern Africa off and on for many years. For several of those years I carried two passports, one for when I flew via Johannesburg, and the other with a visa for entry into any African country, who might refuse me passage if they saw my TYD.VERBLYPERMIT stamp. For me personally, apartheid was a stain on my heritage and on the distorted world into which I had grown up. Despite an Oxford degree in english literature, I continued reading thousands of books for more than thirty years. This is the only book I have ever read which completely tore my heart to tears.
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