Ingrid Jonker | |
|---|---|
 Ingrid Jonker in 1956 | |
| Born | 19 September 1933 Douglas, Northern Cape, South Africa |
| Died | 19 July 1965 (aged 31) Three Anchor Bay, Cape Town, South Africa |
| Education | Wynberg Girls' High School |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Known for | Poetry |
| Spouse | Pieter Venter |
| Children | 1 |
Ingrid Jonker (19 September 1933 – 19 July 1965) OIS was a South African poet and one of the founders of modern Afrikaans literature. Her poems have been widely translated into other languages.
Born into an Afrikaner family with four hundred year old roots in South Africa, Ingrid Jonker grew up in a broken home. After the death of her mother, she and her sister Anna moved in with their estranged father, where they faced secret and escalating emotional abuse from their step mother before both moving out.
During the 1950s and 1960s, which saw the Sharpeville massacre, the increasingly draconian enforcement of Apartheid laws, and escalating terrorism committed both by Government security forces and by the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress, Jonker chose to affiliate herself with Cape Town's racially mixed literary bohemia, which gathered around her fellow Afrikaner poet and literary mentor Uys Krige in the beach-side suburb of Clifton. In both her poems and in newspaper interviews, Jonker denounced the ruling National Party's racial policies and the increasing censorship of literature and the media. This brought her into open conflict with her father, a widely respected Member of Parliament for the ruling Party. In 1965, Jonker's childhood trauma, recent failed marriage, and her disastrous relationships with several different men led to her major depression and finally suicide by drowning. Even so, Jonker has reached iconic status in post-Apartheid South Africa and is often compared with Sylvia Plath and Marilyn Monroe.