Ingrid Jonker

In 2012, Nicola Haskins choreographed a dance drama which told the life story of Jonker for the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and then later to be performed at various venues including the University of Pretoria.

In 2011, Dutch actress Carice van Houten played Ingrid Jonker in the biographical film Black Butterflies, directed by Paula van der Oest. The film also starred Irish actor Liam Cunningham as Jack Cope and Rutger Hauer as Abraham Jonker. Despite being a fully Dutch production about a poet who spoke and wrote in Afrikaans, Black Butterflies was filmed entirely in English.

Also in 2011, South African musician Chris Chameleon released an album of Jonker's works, entitled As Jy Weer Skryf ("If You Write Again").

In 2007 a documentary Ingrid Jonker, her Lives and Time by Mozambique-born South African film and documentary director Helena Nogueira was released in South Africa. Hailed as the definitive work on Jonker this is the first literary documentary to receive theatrical release in South Africa.

Also, in 2007 work was already underway on a feature film about Ingrid Jonker with the working title All that Breaks. Based on a script by Helena Nogueira workshopped at Johannesburg's Market Theatre, the film focusses on three years in the life of Jonker and the Sestigers who gathered around poet Uys Krige at Clifton in Cape Town. The film is produced by David Parfitt (Shakespeare in Love), Charles Moore (Schindler's List) and Shan Moodley and is directed by Nogueira.

Jonker's literary papers went to the National English Literary Museum (NELM) in Grahamstown. Her sister Anna Jonker borrowed these with the intention of writing a biography on her sister. November 2005.

In 2005 Chris Chameleon (known better as the lead singer of the South African band Boo!) released the album Ek Herhaal Jou ("I Repeat You"), which consisted of a number of Jonker's poems that he had set to music. The release coincided with the 40th anniversary of Jonker's death. Some of Jonker's poems that inspired Chameleon's songs are Bitterbessie Dagbreek ("Bitterberry Daybreak"), Lied van die gebreekte Riete ("Song of the Broken Reeds") and Ontvlugting ("Escape").

In April 2004 Jonker was posthumously awarded the Order of Ikhamanga by the South African government for "her excellent contribution to literature and a commitment to the struggle for human rights and democracy in South Africa."

In 2003 ddisselblom, an Afrikaans pop group, released an eponymously titled CD containing the track Falkenburg, a very well executed adaptation of Jonker's "Ontvlugting".

Jonker's biographer is Petrovna Metelerkamp, who published Ingrid Jonker – Beeld van 'n digterslewe ("Ingrid Jonker – Image of a Poet's Life") in 2003. This book contains new insights into the poet's life, and includes love letters (some unsent) and an as yet unpublished account of the night of Jonker's death by her friend, Bonnie Davidtsz. Simone, Ingrid's daughter received a once off payment. An English, and updated version of this biography appeared in 2012: Ingrid Jonker – A Poet's Life. The photos and other information came mainly from the Ingrids collection which was sold in 2000 illegally by a family member to Gerrit Komrei where it was kept in Portugal since 2000. Simone has appealed to the heirs for the Komrei heirs for the return of her legacy to South Africa. An Ingrid Jonker Center will be established in Cape Town under the FAK in collaboration with the Vootrekker Monument. Simone will act as curator of the center.

In 2002 the one-woman, interactive play by Ryk Hattingh, Opdrag: Ingrid Jonker ("Assignment: Ingrid Jonker"), was staged at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival starring Jana Cilliers. The play dealt with questions and comments on Jonker's life, interwoven with her poems and other writing.

In 2001 a documentary about Jonker was produced for Dutch television by Saskia van Schaik: Korreltjie niks is my dood.

At the opening of the first democratically elected Parliament of South Africa on 24 May 1994, Nelson Mandela praised Jonker's role as a critic of Apartheid and suggested that her suicide was an extreme protest against a nation that refused to hear her. Mandela then read Jonker's poem, Die kind (wat doodgeskiet is deur soldate by Nyanga) ("The child (who was shot dead by soldiers at Nyanga)") in English translation.

After Jonker's death, copyrights and control of her literary estate and papers were awarded to Jack Cope by the Master of the Court. He established the Ingrid Jonker Trust. He remained a trustee of the Trust until his death in 1991. Jonker's daughter Simone Venter is the beneficiary. Copyright is still vested in the Trust.

A number of her poems have been set to music over the years, beginning with the song cycle Vyf liedere for soprano and piano by Stefans Grové (1981), and sung by such artists as Laurika Rauch, Anneli van Rooyen and Chris Chameleon.

According to a December 1966 article by Jack Cope in the London Magazine, Ingrid's, "mother, Beatrice Cilliers, came from an old Huguenot family, with generations of intellectual attainments."

Abraham Jonker died of an aneurism in his aorta on 10 January 1966, just six months after the suicide of his daughter.

During the night of 19 July 1965, Ingrid Jonker went down to the beach at Three Anchor Bay in Cape Town, walked into the sea, and committed suicide by drowning.

Psychologist L.M. van der Merwe has written, "Shortly before her death she underlined a verse by Dylan Thomas, 'After the first death, there is no other' ... Thereby she confirmed that the farewell had taken place long before 19 July 1965. But the physical deed committed that morning makes it very difficult to maintain perspective, to judge the value of her influence, because on that day a legend was born."

Ingrid's bohemian friends had originally planned a secular funeral for her, at which her poems were to be read aloud. Outraged by the idea, Abraham Jonker overruled them and took control of the arrangements. According to the newspapers, Abraham was determined to keep his daughter's funeral from becoming a place of protest against the regime. When it took place on 22 July 1965, there was no church service, but a Dutch Reformed minister, Rev. J.L. van Rooyen, officiated at the graveside. Ingrid's sister Anna boycotted the funeral in protest against the change to the arrangements. At the funeral, the mourners were divided. On one hand were the Jonker family, their friends, and a group of Special Branch Detectives. On the other were Ingrid's friends from Cape Town's literary bohemia.

Following discussions after her religious funeral, Ingrid's friends held a secular funeral for her on 25 July 1965. Before more than a hundred mourners, Uys Krige spoke about Ingrid's poetry and Jan Rabie read some of her poems aloud. This time, Ingrid's sister Anna attended. Jan le Roux, a high school teacher from Riviersonderend, wished to take his students, who loved Ingrid's poetry, to the funeral. After being refused permission to attend by both the school principal and the local Dutch Reformed minister, the pupils held a private prayer service for Ingrid Jonker, at which her poems were read aloud.

After the death of his daughter, Abraham Jonker's health went into rapid decline. In October 1965, he disinherited his daughter Anna after she refused to hand Ingrid's letters to André Brink over to him.

The prestigious Ingrid Jonker Prize for the best debut work of Afrikaans or English poetry was instituted by her friends to honour her legacy after her burial in 1965. This yearly prize, consisting of R10.000 and a medal, is awarded alternately to an Afrikaans or English poet who has published a first volume in the previous two years backed by Dagbreek Uitgewers.

Jonker's next collection of poems Rook en oker ("Smoke and Ochre") was published in 1963 after delays caused by her publishers. While the anthology was praised by most South African writers, poets and critics, it was given a cool reception by supporters of the ruling Party.

The depression caused by her father's rejection of her forced Ingrid to enter the Valkenberg Psychiatric Hospital in 1961.

Her first published book of poems, Ontvlugting ("Escape"), was eventually published in 1956.

They married in 1956, and their daughter Simone was born on 1 December1957. The couple moved to Johannesburg, but three years later they separated. Jonker and her daughter then moved back to Cape Town.

Ingrid Jonker met Pieter Venter, her future husband, at a bohemian party held at Sea Point in 1954. Venter, who was 15 years Ingrid's senior, worked in Cape Town as the sales manager for a company that took foreign tourists on African safaris. Venter also wrote poetry in English and was a close friend of Afrikaans poet Uys Krige and Breytenbach.

In August 1953, she recited poems at the Cape Eisteddfod and received a Diploma for Achievement in Afrikaans.

With her secretarial skills, Ingrid obtained a job working for the Kennis publishing house at the Here XVII Building in downtown Cape Town by late in 1952. She used the money to rent a small apartment above the sea in the suburb of Clifton, which she shared with her close friend, Jean "Bambi" du Preez.

By 1951, Ingrid wanted to move out. Anna later recalled how she travelled from Johannesburg, where she was working at the time, to help Ingrid obtain permission from their father to leave the house in Plumstead.

On two occasions in 1951, she again sent him poems on which Opperman both commented and urged her to send more.

During the 1950s and 60s, 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 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 turbulent early life caused by a broken home and her father's public rejection of her and her sister,including a failed marriage and subsequent unsucessfull relationships including poverty, led to her depression and final suicide. Even so, Jonker has reached iconic status in post-Apartheid South Africa and is often compared with Sylvia Plath and Marilyn Monroe.

According to Louise Viljoen, "Although Abraham Jonker has been portrayed as the archetypal Apartheid politician in the minds of those who know of the political tension that existed between him and his daughter, he had a chequered political career. In the election that brought D.F. Malan's National Party to power in 1948, he won a seat in Parliament as a member of General Smuts's United Party. Together with other dissidents he formed the Conservative Party in 1954, but crossed the floor in 1956 to join the National Party. Many of his contemporaries spoke of him as a political opportunist and a turncoat. Whether Abraham Jonker's changing political views were the result of careerism or inner conviction, they would bring him into open confrontation with his daughter."

As she lay dying, Ingrid and Anna visited their mother as often as possible. They often shared news with her about boys that they felt unable to discuss with their devout grandmother. After two years in hospital, Beatrice Jonker died of cancer on 6 August 1944.

Anna Jonker later wrote, "Ouma was to take care of us until Pa would fetch us at the end of 1944. To us he was a complete stranger. Before his arrival he had someone ask if there was anything we needed, and we wrote asking for Bibles. Ingrid really wanted a Bible and that, together with the spinning top when she was a baby, were the only presents she received from Pa in her childhood days. Shortly before he was to come and fetch us, I wrote secretly and said we wouldn't be able to go, because we should rather stay with Ouma and go to school at Hottentots Holland or somewhere, because we didn't have smart enough clothes for the Cape."

As Anna writes, however, "He came at the end of 1944. We got into the car, and Ingrid wouldn't let go of Ouma's hand through the open window. She sat at the back and kept looking around at Ouma's little black figure at the side of the road. The road was to lead through the grey teen years in the cold house of our stepmother, through the disillusionment of Ingrid's adult life."

Koos Jonker further recalls, "In 1944, when my father went to fetch Anna and Ingrid, the house in Rondebosch became too small for the whole family. They lodged with people for a while..."

Until the death of their mother, Anna and Ingrid's contact with their father had been minimal. In the years since his divorce from Beatrice, Abraham Jonker had briefly remarried one Barbara Gill before his third marriage to Lulu Brewis, an author of children's books, in 1941.

They moved later to Gordon's Bay. In 1940, Ingrid began attending kindergarten.

In 1938, her grandfather Fanie Cilliers died, leaving the four women destitute. Ingrid later recalled, "Then one morning when I woke up, my sister came to me and said, 'Do you know what? Oupa is dead. His room is full of wreaths.' I heard something about his death years later from Ouma: 'Babs,' (that was her nickname for me) 'the night your grandfather died, he called me to his bed and said, 'Annie, I love you, because you carried my burdens.'"

Ingrid Jonker (19 September 1933 – 19 July 1965) (OIS), was a South African poet who wrote and published in Afrikaans. Her poems, however, have been widely translated into other languages.

By 1933, Abraham and Beatrice Jonker were part of a circle of Cape Town intellectuals who, "joined the old Cape traditions of discussing cultural, political, and social matters." Gladstone Louw later described, "the writer and journalist Abraham Jonker," as, "intelligent, but surly and then already frustrated."

Ingrid Jonker was born on her maternal grandfather's farm near Douglas, Northern Cape, on 19 September 1933. Shortly before her birth, Ingrid's mother Beatrice and her older sister Anna had left Abraham H. Jonker's house in the Cape Town suburb of Vredehoek.

Abraham Jonker also published books and short story collections during the early 1930s. Louise Viljoen writes, "The critical response to his literary work remained lukewarm,perhaps because of his preference for the European-inspired Nuwe Saaklikheid ("Modern Objectivity") was very different from the confessional mode newly popular in Afrikaans literature at the time. Because of the sombre worldview reflected in his writing, Ingrid Jonker's Dutch biographer Henk van Woerden typecast him as a secular Calvinist and described him as an aloof, panic-stricken Puritan."

After graduating high school in 1922, Jonker studied at the University of Stellenbosch between 1923 and 1930. He obtained a Bachelor's Degree, majoring in Ancient Greek and Dutch and in theology. Jonker's theological studies, were, however, more out of a desire to please his parents than out of any real interest. In 1928, Jonker was awarded the theological candidates diploma with honours.

Ingrid's father Abraham Jonker [af] (1905–1966), was born on 22 April 1905 on the Kalkfontein farm, in the Boshoff district of the former Orange Free State. In 1910, Abraham lost his older sister to drowning. As he later recalled, "I wasn't five years old yet and she drowned in the Vaal River at the age of eight, on the same day that King Edward VII died, because I still remember well how all the flags were hanging half-mast when we went to fetch the little coffin in town the following day with the hooded cart – the day my late father came to wake us at four o'clock to see Halley's Comet that was clearly visible in the sky. We all felt so awful, because my late sister's little body was still lying in the house."

Beatrice Catharina Cilliers (1905–1944), the daughter of "Swart Fanie" and Anna Cilliers, met Abraham Jonker while she was studying music at the University of Stellenbosch and married him in 1930.

Ingrid's grandfather, Stephanie "Swart Fanie" ("Black Stevie")was known for his black humor. Ingrid's grandmother, Annie Retief Cilliers (1873–1957), was a devout woman who enjoyed preaching to coloured people. She attended the Apostolic Church, because they were so "lively and jolly", as Ingrid later wrote.

On both sides of the family, the ancestors of Ingrid Jonker had lived in South Africa for centuries. Her forefather on her father's side, Adolph Jonker, was the son of a plantation owner from Macassar, in the Dutch East Indies, and had emigrated to the Cape Colony during the early 18th century. Adolph Jonker became the schoolteacher and warden of the Dutch Reformed congregation at Drakenstein. In 1740, he married Maria Petronella Langeveld, the daughter of Jacobus Langveld and an unknown woman from the Cape.