Ingrid Jonker - Adulthood and Career

Adulthood and Career

Jonker married Pieter Venter in 1956, and their daughter Simone was born in 1957. The couple moved to Johannesburg, but three years later they separated. Jonker and her daughter then moved back to Cape Town.

Her father, already a writer, editor and National Party Member of Parliament, was appointed chairman of the parliamentary select committee responsible for censorship laws on art, publications and entertainment. To his embarrassment, his daughter was vehemently opposed to these laws and their political differences became public. In a speech in parliament Jonker's father denied her as his daughter. During the same time period she had affairs with two writers, Jack Cope and André Brink. One of these affairs resulted in a pregnancy and she underwent an abortion (a crime in South Africa at the time). The mental distress of her father's rejection and the abortion contributed to her decision to enter the Valkenberg Psychiatric Hospital in 1961. (Jonker's mother had died at Valkenberg several years before.)

Jonker's next collection of poems Rook en oker ("Smoke and Ochre") was published in 1963 after delays caused by the conservative approach of her publishers. While the collection was praised by most South African writers, poets and critics, it was given a cool reception by the more conservative white South African public. Thereafter she became known as one of the Die Sestigers, a group that also included Breyten Breytenbach, André Brink, Adam Small and Bartho Smit, who were challenging the conservative Afrikaans literary norms at the time.

Rook en oker won Jonker the £1000 Afrikaanse Pers-Boekhandel (Afrikaans Press-Booksellers) literary prize, as well as a scholarship from the Anglo American Corporation. The money helped her to realize her dream of travelling to Europe, where she went to England, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Portugal. She asked Jack Cope to accompany her, but he refused. Jonker then asked André Brink to join her. He accepted and they went to Paris and Barcelona together. During the trip Brink decided against leaving his wife for Jonker and went back to South Africa. Jonker then cut her tour short and returned to Cape Town.

Jonker had started writing a new collection of poems just before her death. A selection of these poems was published posthumously in the collection Kantelson ("Toppling Sun"). She then witnesses a shattering event: a Black baby was shot in his mother’ arms. She underlined from Dylan Thomas: "after the first death, there is no other". And she wrote: "Die kind (wat doodgeskiet is deur soldate by Nyanga)", "The child (who was shot dead by soldiers at Nyanga").