Antjie Krog - Early Life

Early Life

Born into an Afrikaner family of writers, she grew up on a farm, attending primary and secondary school in the area. In 1970, at the height of John Vorster's apartheid years, she penned an anti-apartheid poem for her school magazine: Gee vir my 'n land waar swart en wit hand aan hand, vrede en liefde kan bring in my mooi land (Give me a land where black and white hand in hand, Can bring peace and love to my beautiful land) scandalising her conservative Afrikaans-speaking community and bringing the attention of the national media to her parents' doorstep:

In 1973 she earned a BA (Hons) degree in English from the University of the Orange Free State, and an MA in Afrikaans from the University of Pretoria in 1976. With a teaching diploma from the University of South Africa (UNISA) she would lecture at a segregated teacher’s training college for black South Africans.

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