The Child; Ingrid Jonker

By her death, she joined herself to the children of our country about whom she had written. Her tragic passing was as powerful an indictment of the apartheid system as were these verses which she has left us....


PEECH AT THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON "CHILDREN, REPRESSION AND THE LAW IN APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA", HARARE, SEPTEMBER 24, 1987(1)

Mr Chairman, Rt. Rev. Archbishop Trevor Huddleston,

Comrade Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe, the Honourable Robert Mugabe,

Your Excellencies, members of the Diplomatic Corps,

Comrades leaders of the brother people of Zimbabwe,

Distinguished participants at this important conference,

Comrades, friends, ladies and gentlemen,

The Afrikaner poet, Ingrid Jonker, died in 1965 at the young age of 32. Consumed by a dark foreboding and overwhelmed by despair, she committed suicide as her creative intellect was coming to its ripening.

By her death, she joined herself to the children of our country about whom she had written. Her tragic passing was as powerful an indictment of the apartheid system as were these verses which she has left us:

The child is not dead

the child lifts his fists against his

mother

who shouts Africa! shouts the breath

of freedom and the veld

in the locations of the cordoned heart.

The child is not dead

not at Langa nor at Nyanga

nor at Orlando nor at Sharpeville

nor at the police post at Philippi

where he lies with a bullet through his

brain

The child is the dark shadow of the

soldiers on guard with their rifles,

saracens and batons

the child is present at all assemblies

and law-giving

the child peers through the windows of

houses and into the hearts of mother

this child who wanted only to play in

the sun at Nyanga is everywhere

the child grown to the man treks on

through all Africa

the child grown into a giant journeys

over the whole world without a pass