Ingrid Jonker Net Worth

Background and career

Ingrid Jonker (19 September 1933 – 19 July 1965) was a South African poet and accomplished figure in modern Afrikaans literature. Her poems have been widely translated into other languages.

Born into an Afrikaner family with 400-year-old roots in South Africa, Jonker grew up in an unstable family. After the death of her mother, she and her sister Anna moved in with their until-then-estranged father, where they encountered significant emotional abuse from their stepmother 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.