South African Reconciliation

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the book "Country of My Skull." by Antjie Krog about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which was formed after apartheid ended in South Africa in July 1995. It examines how Krog's book is an emotional look at the TRC, its strengths and weaknesses and some of the human rights violations it uncovered. It shows how not only does Krog write of the TRC, she writes of herself, a white Afrikaner, trying to make sense of what happened during Apartheid and what happens to her country afterwards and how struggles with her own identity along with the identity of a new South Africa.

From the Paper:

"Krog explains part of what happened in South Africa between the whites and the oppressed blacks as a type of myth. Not as an excuse or an escape, more as a kind of reconciliation of what happened, and why so many people turned their heads and ignored it. "A myth is a unit of imagination which makes it possible for a human being to accommodate two worlds. It reconciles the contradictions of these two worlds in a workable fashion and holds open the way between them. The two worlds are the inner and the outer world. Myth makes it possible to live with what you cannot endure" (Krog 190)."

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