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

Chapter 19 addresses problems within the TRC and questions that undermine Krog’s own point of view. Most of Chapter 19 centers around a scandal involving Commissioner Dumisa Ntsebeza when a memo from a bombing that took place during the apartheid era implicates him. Ntsebeza is chairperson of the investigative unit, making the accusation doubly troublesome, and his second in command resigns. Krog publishes a report about the incident without having access to any of the documents, prompting fury from both Boraine and Tutu. Eventually, the documents are shared, and the hearing takes place, during which a witness gives an odd, dramatic performance that names Ntsebeza as a culprit. Soon after, the witness recants, admitting that someone coached him to lie. A separate investigation by the TRC further exonerates Ntsebeza, but the damage to the TRC’s reputation remains.

In the aftermath, Krog states: “I am suddenly sick and tired of the Truth Commission” (310). Having lost her connection to Tutu and Boraine, she feels ready to move on. Krog’s feelings have been brewing since before the Ntsebeza incident, however, as she describes two conversations prior to then, one with a Dutch man in Europe who suggests there is an underhanded deal between the ANC and the TRC, and another with a black friend in Charles de Gaulle airport who suggests both Nelson and Winnie Mandela may have been involved in problematic activities. Krog, whose faith in the TRC has been mostly solid up to this point, begins to doubt the Commission and her feelings about it.

Krog also includes a conversation about the nature and purpose of art in the wake of tragedy, comparing reactions to the Holocaust to reactions about South Africa, though she prefaces this conversation by saying that it is a fiction based on other works. Krog also address the business hearings for the TRC, which ask the question of whether business benefited from apartheid.

Krog devotes an entire chapter to the trial of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and her “football club.” Madikizela-Mandela’s hearing is a significant media event attracting journalists from all over the world, and involves more spectacle and drama than most of the other hearings in the TRC. Krog lays out Madikizela-Mandela’s complicated personality by describing her in seven “pictures” ranging from beloved mother figure to clever politician to intimidating bully. Madikizela-Mandela’s hearing focuses on three particular cases—including that of Stompie Seipei, whose mother’s testimony appears earlier in Country of My Skull.

Krog lays out Seipei’s case, providing details that were missing from Seipei’s mother’s testimony and understanding of what happened. While Madikizela-Mandela comes across as a terrifying figure, many of the people she has supposedly hurt refuse to say anything bad about her. Those who do speak worry about what will happen to them, and Madikizela-Mandela ridicules them in front of the assembly. In the middle of the hearings, the TRC grants amnesty to all of the top ANC leadership, which Krog finds disturbingly timed, and she questions the reasoning.

As Madikizela-Mandela continues to deny everything, Archbishop Tutu literally pleads with her to admit that “something went wrong” (338). Prompted by Tutu, Madikizela-Mandela acknowledges that “things went horribly wrong and we were aware that there were factors that led to that” (339). Krog discusses Madikizela-Mandela’s admission with another person. Her conversation partner is disgusted, believing that Tutu has given Madikizela-Mandela a way to absolve herself of responsibility by apologizing. Krog argues that, “By admitting that things went wrong, she herself wiped out her whole culture of honor […] A space was created for the first time for both her and her followers to admit in an honorable way that things went wrong” (340).

Chapter 21 consists of several pieces and fragments. Krog begins with another fabricated conversation based on prior literature during which she and a colleague discuss the nature of evil and the differences between guilt and shame. Krog explains: “The essence of shame is the honor of a group, the essence of guilt is the responsibility of the individual toward a specific morality” (342). Krog and her associate expand the conversation to include how guilt and shame apply to the NP and ANC, and to Afrikaners and blacks in South Africa as groups.

P.W. Botha, F.W. de Klerk’s predecessor in the NP, refuses to cooperate with the TRC even after receiving a subpoena three times. He eventually appears for a regional criminal trial that is as much if not more of a spectacle than Madikizela-Mandela’s hearing was. Botha sticks to his beliefs that Afrikaners are superior, that blacks are Marxists who threaten the state, and that apartheid was a good idea. Krog refers to Botha by his colloquial nickname, “Die Groot Krokodil,” and makes many comparisons between him and an actual crocodile. She concludes that he is a fool.

Krog goes home for Christmas and witnesses her Afrikaner family deal with the aftermath of the ending of apartheid, having to protect their farm from attackers and living in constant vigilance. Her brothers want to leave the country, feeling that “this is no longer my country” (358). Krog also observes more of the TRC’s failings and the continued controversies surrounding the Commission, but insists that for all of its difficulties, on the whole the Commission is still a good thing. She concludes with poetry expressing her ties to her homeland and all that it represents.