Ingrid Jonker and Apartheid in South Africa

Abstract

The article is devoted to the life and work of the South African poetess Ingrid Jonker. Jonker’s biography is viewed against the backdrop of historical events related to the establishment of the apartheid system in South Africa, increased censorship, the atmosphere of repression and despair, and increasingly tense relations between writers and authorities. Ingrid Jonker was part of a group of so-called “Sixties” (Sestigers), innovator writers who challenged existing literary canons and social norms. Ingrid Jonker 's opposition to the punitive policy of the apartheid, to the desire of Afrikaners to protect their identity by destroying the identity of other peoples, led to the breakdown of her relationship with her father, Member of Parliament and advocate of the apartheid. This tragedy was intensified by the excruciating "love triangle" with writers Andre Brink and Jack Cope, and the disappointment of travelling to Europe, where Jonker suffered from loneliness and longing for her homeland. But when she returned to South Africa, she failed to adapt to life in a society of total injustice, fear, despair, shame for the crimes of her own people and the impossibility of simply giving it up... Ingrid Jonker’s biography is also a story about the “disconnection” of the South African society of the 1950s — 1960s. About how the authoritarian regime leads to the development of a “sick” society, generates paranoia, madness, “doublethink”, dualism of the soul. It generates a poet for whom death becomes the only way to remain faithful to his conscience.