Ingrid Jonker (19 September 1933 – 19 July 1965) was a South African poet and accomplished figure in modern Afrikaans literature. Her poems have been widely translated into other languages.
Born into an Afrikaner family with 400-year-old roots in South Africa, Jonker grew up in an unstable family. After the death of her mother, she and her sister Anna moved in with their until-then-estranged father, where they encountered significant emotional abuse from their stepmother before both moving out.
During the 1950s and 1960s, which saw the Sharpeville massacre, the increasingly draconian enforcement of Apartheid laws, and escalating terrorism committed both by Government security forces and by the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress, Jonker chose to affiliate herself with Cape Town's racially mixed literary bohemia, which gathered around her fellow Afrikaner poet and literary mentor Uys Krige in the beach-side suburb of Clifton. In both her poems and in newspaper interviews, Jonker denounced the ruling National Party's racial policies and the increasing censorship of literature and the media. This brought her into open conflict with her father, a widely respected Member of Parliament for the ruling Party. In 1965, Jonker's childhood trauma, recent failed marriage, and her disastrous relationships with several different men led to her major depression and finally suicide by drowning. Even so, Jonker has reached iconic status in post-Apartheid South Africa and is often compared with Sylvia Plath and Marilyn Monroe.
Family origins On both sides of the family, the ancestors of Ingrid Jonker had lived in South Africa for centuries. Her forefather on her father's side, Adolph Jonker, was the son of a plantation owner from Macassar, in the Dutch East Indies, and had emigrated to the Cape Colony during the early 18th century. Adolph Jonker became the schoolteacher and warden of the Dutch Reformed congregation at Drakenstein. In 1740, he married Maria Petronella Langeveld, the daughter of Jacobus Langveld and an unknown woman from the Cape.Petrovna Metelerkamp (2012), Ingrid Jonker: A Poet's Life, page 21.
Ingrid's father (1905–1966), was born on 22 April 1905 on the Kalkfontein farm, in the Boshoff district of the former Orange Free State. In 1910, Abraham lost his older sister to drowning. As he later recalled, "I wasn't five years old yet and she drowned in the Vaal River at the age of eight, on the same day that King Edward VII died, because I still remember well how all the flags were hanging half-mast when we went to fetch the little coffin in town the following day with the hooded cart – the day my late father came to wake us at four o'clock to see Halley's Comet that was clearly visible in the sky. We all felt so awful, because my late sister's little body was still lying in the house."Petrovna Metelerkamp (2012), Ingrid Jonker: A Poet's Life, page 201.
After graduating high school in 1922,Petrovna Metelerkamp (2012), Ingrid Jonker: A Poet's Life, page 20. Jonker studied at the University of Stellenbosch between 1923 and 1930. He obtained a Bachelor's Degree, majoring in Ancient Greek and Dutch and in theology. Jonker's theological studies, were, however, more out of a desire to please his parents than out of any real interest.Viljoen (2012), pages 27–28. In 1928, Jonker was awarded the theological candidates diploma with honours.
According to a December 1966 article by Jack Cope in the London Magazine, Ingrid's, "mother, Beatrice Cilliers, came from an old Huguenot family, with generations of intellectual attainments."Petrovna Metelerkamp (2012), Ingrid Jonker: A Poet's Life, page 24.
While the ancestors of the Cilliers family had left France in order to continue practicing their Calvinist faith, Ingrid's grandfather, Stephanie "Swart Fanie" ("Black Stevie") was known for his indifference to religious practice and mockery of dignified local Dutch Reformed ministers. Ingrid's grandmother, Annie Retief Cilliers (1873–1957), was a devoutly religious woman who enjoyed preaching to coloured people. She attended the Apostolic Church, because they were so "lively and jolly", as Ingrid later wrote.Viljoen (2012), pages 18–19.
Ingrid's sister, Anna Jonker, later wrote, "The one story Ingrid always wanted to hear, was how it happened that Oupa married Ouma. Ouma had been in love with Oupa's brother, but he had the habit of crowing like a rooster – and the Ouma would crow, to let us hear what it sounded like – so she decided to marry Swart Fanie. The story always ended with, 'And I used to think he wouldn't be that foolish!'"Petrovna Metelerkamp (2012), Ingrid Jonker: A Poet's Life, page 19.
Also according to Anna Jonker, "Swart Fanie" had "a fiery temperament" and once "tore up the documentary proof that the English had commandeered virtually all his mules and wagons during the Anglo-Boer War and hurled them back at an English officer."
Beatrice Catharina Cilliers (1905–1944), the daughter of "Swart Fanie" and Anna Cilliers, met Abraham Jonker while she was studying music at the University of Stellenbosch and married him in 1930.Viljoen (2012), page 27.
After their marriage, Abraham Jonker first worked as a travelling organiser for the National Party before becoming a journalist in Cape Town for such publications as Burger, Die Huisgenoot, Jongspan, and Suiderstem. Jonker also obtained a doctorate with honours in Afrikaans literature. He also started his own bilingual magazine, Die Monitor, which he sold himself in order to, as he put it, dedicate himself exclusively to journalism and literature.Petrovna Metelerkamp (2012), Ingrid Jonker: A Poet's Life, pages 20–21.
Abraham Jonker also published books and short story collections during the early 1930s. Louise Viljoen writes, "The critical response to his literary work remained lukewarm, perhaps because of his preference for the European-inspired Nuwe Saaklikheid ("Modern Objectivity") was very different from the confessional mode newly popular in Afrikaans literature at the time. Because of the sombre worldview reflected in his writing, Ingrid Jonker's Dutch biographer Henk van Woerden typecast him as a secular Calvinist and described him as an aloof, panic-stricken Puritan."Viljoen (2012), page 28. By his own admission, however, Abraham Jonker had never expected or desired immortality as a writer and always considered his own poetry substandard.Petrovna Meleterkamp (2012), page 66. Jonker admitted, however, that the greatest influence, even upon his journalistic output, and from who, "I learned that clear simplicity in whatever needs to be said", was Omar Khayyam, "with whom I first became acquainted at the age of twelve or thirteen and to whose work I always return, even though I have loved a great deal of the world's poets since then."Petrovna Meleterkamp (2012), page 67.
By 1933, Abraham and Beatrice Jonker were part of a circle of Cape Town intellectuals who "joined the old Cape traditions of discussing cultural, political, and social matters." Gladstone Louw later described "the writer and journalist Abraham Jonker" as "intelligent, but surly and then already frustrated". At the same time, however, Abraham and Beatrice Jonker would often perform duets together at social gatherings. Beatrice played the piano, while Abraham performed upon the violin.Petrovna Meleterkamp (2012), page 22.
There were serious troubles, however, in the Jonkers' marriage. Ingrid's half-brother, Koos Jonker, later recalled, "Beatrice, Ingrid's mother, suffered from hallucinations and sometimes acted irrationally – even before she left my father."Petrovna Metelerkamp (2012), Ingrid Jonker: A Poet's Life, page 23.
Family friend W.A. de Klerk later recalled, "I would say Ingrid's incapacity to find any happiness on a personal level should be seen in terms of her own broken home background. Her father was not an easy man. He often became violent... My wife remembers the evenings very well when Ingrid's mother fled the house with Annatije as a small child."Petrovna Metelerkamp (2012), Ingrid Jonker: A Poet's Life, page 25.
Early life Ingrid Jonker was born on her maternal grandfather's farm near Douglas, Northern Cape, on 19 September 1933. Shortly before her birth, Ingrid's mother Beatrice and her older sister Anna had left Abraham H. Jonker's house in the Cape Town suburb of Vredehoek,Louise Viljoen (2012), Ingrid Jonker: Poet under Apartheid, Ohio University Press. Page 16. after Abraham Jonker allegedly accused his wife of adultery during an argument and suggested that her unborn daughter was not his child.Petrovna Meleterkamp (2012), page 23.
Beatrice and Anna Jonker first found refuge at the home of a neighbour, J.A. Smith. Then, mother and daughter left for Beatrice's parent's farm, known as "Swart Fanie".
According to Louise Viljoen, "A letter survived in which Beatrice firmly rejects Abraham's plea that she returns to him."
Ingrid and Anna's childhood was spent on small farms owned by their grandfather.
Ingrid later wrote, "At the time my father was not with the family and my grandfather Fanie Cilliers, a top joke teller, paralyzed and bedridden for 15 years, but the wittiest person I ever knew, ruled the house in his own exuberant way."
Anna Jonker later claimed about "Swart Fanie", "He had been paralyzed for many years and during his last years he was completely bedridden. But there, in his large bedroom with doors leading onto the veranda, he entertained his friends until the pipe-smoke hung blue in the air. The loud laughing, the pranks, the stories attracted us children; Ingrid would crawl in behind Oupa's back, from where Ouma would come and fetch her when the stories got too rough."
Anna further recalled, "Ingrid was always Ouma's child. Ouma Annie Retief, pretty Annie (Mooi Annie) from Paarl, a fine slender woman with eyes flecked with green, that often sparkled, but could at times look quite stern."
Jonker's grandparents moved to a farm near Durbanville.
Anna later recalled, "It was in Durbanville, I think, that Ingrid was baptised. She was three or four years old and the family was just as upset about that as about the unusual name she was given. Mamma found the name in a book and that was that; as she would always say. Mamma was always being different, the family used to say, and who has heard of a child baptised in a garden? Ingrid wore a pretty white dress and there were cakes, tea and many people. I was so jealous that I hid in the neighbours' garden and watched it all through the fence."
As girls Ingrid and Anna were often taken to visit their grandmother's wealthy relatives, who owned vineyards in Paarl. Anna later recalled, "We often went to visit the family in Paarl. The oldest people we knew were Ouma's mother and aunt, while lived in Hillside in Paarl. We were overwhelmed by the grand house and quite taken aback by the degree of cleanliness expected of us. To us it felt as if we had to wash our hands a hundred times a day, and that just to be given some of the delicious food or at most two or three of the pretty little biscuits. Great-grandmother believed that girls should be little ladies. We sat on pouffes with our little ankles crossed, trying not to laugh at the funny name of the seat, while they solemnly proceeded to establish family ties."
Anna also recalled of her father, "Abraham came to see us in Durbanville, but it upset my mother so much to see him that Oupa said he must stay away."Petrovna Metelerkamp (2012), Ingrid Jonker: A Poet's Life, page 26.
During the same visit, Abraham brought a red top as a gift for Ingrid, but otherwise refused to acknowledge her presence.Viljoen (2012), page 25.
According to Anna, "Then the gossip started in Stellenbosch. Ingrid never knew about it."