Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa

This short chapter covers two longer transcripts from specific victims—Basil Snayer and Yassir Henry, with some responses from Alex Boraine and Archbishop Tutu. Both men’s testimony regards the death of anti-apartheid activist Anton Fransch. Snayer’s testimony covers the night of Fransch’s murder, during which police invaded Snayer’s home to use as a base for their siege. Snayer describes the aftermath: “There were bits of clothing on the floor, against the wall—the walls and ceiling were blood-spattered all—all over” (70), noting that he believes Fransch and those like him were heroes. 

The other testimony belongs to Yassir Henry, who at 19 years old was, in his telling, betrayed by a fellow military member to police searching for Fransch. Henry, by his account, reveals Fransch’s whereabouts from peer pressure, which results in Fransch’s death, at which Henry is present in a car. Henry feels victimized, as people view him as a traitor, but claims that he had no choice but to reveal Fransch’s location, and that he did not understand what would happen.

Krog shifts focus from the victims to the perpetrators—the eponymous “second narrative,” which begins six months after the victims’ hearings started. She muses on the nature of truth, describing the victims’ truth as an unknown woman, and the perpetrators’ truth as white and male. Krog offers some historical context, noting the ongoing debate in South Africa about whether blacks who committed violence against other blacks at the instigation of whites should face accountability according to the same standard as the white perpetrators.

Krog also notes that even as the TRC has been in session for months, people around the country still question its purpose, citing a book published at the time that asked: “If the Truth Commission cannot distinguish between right and wrong, how can it weave a moral fabric?” (76). She details how the Amnesty Committee sessions suffer from delays, disagreements about seating arrangements, and other tensions that highlight the difficult nature of the task at hand.  

The remainder of this chapter focuses on testimony from members of the Vlakplaas—the police hit squads that carried out numerous acts of violence during apartheid. Krog provides fragments from half a dozen Vlakplaas members, both white and black, but largely focuses on Dirk Coetzee, a founder of the Vlakplaas and one of the first people to apply for amnesty. Coetzee, like other police and military applicants, focuses more on statistics of his past actions than on demonstrating clear remorse, though he does seem to understand that what he did was wrong.

Krog dives deeper into perpetrator testimony through transcript-style sections as well as quotes from amnesty application forms, radio interviews, and an excerpt from one of her own news pieces. She focuses more on psychology, specifically the psychology of perpetrators blaming their actions on childhood trauma and of lying versus memory loss. The Amnesty Committee hears from a psychologist to try to distinguish “whether people are genuinely traumatized or whether they are deliberately hiding information and so do not fulfill the amnesty requirement of full disclosure” (98).

Krog’s discussion of psychology and memory loss specifically ties to the testimony of police captain Jeffrey Benzien, who during his testimony speaks directly with several of the people he tortured, including a member of Parliament. As Krog describes it: “Never had the double-edged relationship between the torturer and the tortured been depicted as graphically as it was that week” (93). In Krog’s assessment, Benzien is wily and manipulative, making his former victims feel powerless once again, though Benzien’s psychologist insists that Benzien is mentally fragile and that his stated inability to remember many of his actions may be real.

This chapter consists entirely of two pieces of testimony, both from women who suffered attacks on or near Christmas. One is a black woman whose husband died in an attack in their home that also terrified her children. The other is a white woman who was herself injured in an attack on a white golf club. 

As Krog wraps up her section on the hearings, she focuses on one particular set of amnesty testimonies—those of the Vlakplaas Five. Krog focuses on a single incident, the murder of the Mutases, observing that every Vlakplaas member who testifies tells a slightly different version of the story. Most of the Five are defensive; some are remorseful and some block out the memories. Amid the weeks-long testimony, the building in which the hearings take place catches fire, causing delays and confusion.

Krog attempts to make sense of the conflicting testimonies in a variety of ways. Woven throughout the actual testimonies and conversations, Krog details conversations with psychologists that she has in an attempt to understand the perpetrators’ psyches. As part of her attempts to understand the men’s perspective and her view of them, Krog also engages in self-exploration of her own Afrikaner identity. She wants to understand how she is similar to the Five and how she is different. In doing so, she recalls very specific Afrikaner male culture, which she calls “the Afrikaner manne” (113), as well as an incident in which she received a death threat for her covering of the TRC. Krog wonders, “Was there perhaps never a distance [between myself and the perpetrators] except the one I have built up with great effort within myself over the years?” (121).