Forging a New South Africa: Plagiarism, Ventriloquism and the ‘Black Voice’ in Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull

Abstract

This article returns to the controversial topic of Krog's alleged plagiarisms in her highly acclaimed account of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Country of My Skull, and connects Krog's borrowings with a less-noted feature of that work, that is her heavy editing (arguably, fictionalisation) of some of the testimonies reproduced by her in that book. Most critics read the testimonies presented in Country of My Skull as faithful versions of those given at the hearings, edited only for punctuation and readability (as Krog insists was her method), and many critics offer commentary on the TRC based on Krog's rendering of it. Catherine M. Cole1 has noted, though, in her book Performing South Africa's Truth Commission, that the changes are more substantive. Tracing these alterations alongside Krog's obscuring of authorship via various borrowings, I argue that the two phenomena work in tandem to ‘forge’ an indigenous South African voice, which Krog casts as specifically ‘black’. These observations I frame within a larger argument about the pressures of national authorship, and transcultural accountability and literary honour. In so doing, I discuss previously un-noted borrowings by Krog – from the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and from the anthropologist Julian Pitt-Rivers.