"Of course she can write!" seems the mother of the award-winning South African poet Antjie Krog ever having exclaimed. "Because I can do it too, right? There's nothing special about that."
Blood creeps, even for Krog. After a ten-year career as a successful architect - and secretly grinding on words - her own son debuted Andries Samuel with the crushing, heartbreaking collection of poetry Wanpraktyk (2011).
Writers Unlimited brought mother and son together on stage. Late at night. For the first time ever. And Wende sang to them. And god almighty how beautiful that was. By the way, you have to take it from us, because on pain of caning, pitch & feathers and fines from here to Siberia, it turned out that it was forbidden to film Wende singing (but we did, and the film was online for a while, but has now been removed from the internet).
Samuel shrugged. "My grandmother was Prometheus who stole fire from the Gods. She had no choice but to pass it on to us." His Afrikaans is restrained, bitten off, and at the same time rolling and fluent. Recognisable and hallucinatory, precisely because, as a Dutchman, it is far from easy to understand word for word.
Mother and son carry a great sadness: Samuel's little daughter lives with her mother in Israel. This far-flung child is horribly missed. And that pain goes straight into the soul. Like a tractor driving over your heart.
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