Tuesday, July 23, 2013

News at Eleven: [Ingrid] 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").

During the night of 19 July 1965, Jonker went to the beach at Three Anchor Bay in Cape Town where she walked into the sea and committed suicide by drowning. On hearing of Jonker's death, her father reportedly said: "They can throw her back in the sea for all I care."

from The Patriotic Vanguard: Poetry: The Child Who Was Shot Dead By Soldiers in Nyanga

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