Uys Krige

Life

Uys Krige was born in Bontebokskloof (near Swellendam) in the Cape Province.

Even though the Krige family believed in Afrikaner nationalism, "the home atmosphere was broadminded and creative, his mother was a talented writer and his younger brother a leading painter."

Uys Krige was educated at the University of Stellenbosch. Like many other Afrikaner young men of his generation, Krige was invited to join the secret society known as the Broederbond, "But on discovering its rule of secrecy and the somewhat medieval rites, Krige beat a hasty retreat."

At the age of 21, Krige left for Europe, where he lived, "on a kind of cheerful vagabondage." Krige acquired fluency in French and Spanish. Whilst in France he played rugby for a team in Toulon, was a swimming coach on the Côte d'Azur, wrote poems and penned freelance articles for the Afrikaans press.

From 1931 to 1933, Krige lived at Martigues, in Provence as a tutor to the daughters of Anglo-African poet Roy Campbell and his English aristocrat-turned-bohemian wife, Mary Garman Campbell. The Campbells' oldest daughter, Anna Campbell, later recalled that Uys Krige replaced a French governess named Anne-Marie, who, "never taught us anything, but drove every night to the casino at Foss to dance". Anna later recalled, however, that she and her sister Tess, "enjoyed doing our lessons", with Uys Krige and that, thanks to him, "we made rapid progress. He stayed with us almost two years."

By the end of 1932, the Pound Sterling had devalued and it had become clear that Krige and the Campbells could no longer afford to live in France. During a discussion with Krige in the spring of 1933, Mary Campbell, "who had read the memoirs of Saint Theresa of Avila when she was six and had a preconceived idea of everything Spanish", recommended moving to Spain.

According to Anna Campbell Lyle, in 1933, the Barcelona pension where the Campbell family stayed was flooded with German Jews and other anti-Nazi political refugees, who held a traditional German Christmas celebration. At the same party, Uys Krige attended with a Catalan girlfriend and Anna Campbell Lyle danced a paso-doble on the table.

Krige returned to South Africa in 1935 and began a writing career as a reporter for the Rand Daily Mail.

The Campbells had converted to Roman Catholicism in Altea, Spain and, due to their new faith and to their first hand experiences of the Red Terror by forces loyal to the Second Spanish Republic in Toledo, the Campbells vocally supported the Nationalist faction during the ensuing Spanish Civil War. Meanwhile, Krige campaigned just as passionately for the Republican faction. Despite their views being at variance over the Spanish Civil War, Roy Campbell and Uys Krige remained friends and, in Campbell's 1952 memoir, Light on a Dark Horse, he explains Krige's Republican sympathies by the latter being, "an incurable Calvinist."

In 1937, Krige married the actor Lydia Lindeque, and they had their first child, Eulalia. During the same year, he wrote the Afrikaans poem, Lied van die fascistiese bomwerpers ("Hymn of the Fascist Bombers"). Krige later recalled, "I needed only a line or two, then the poem wrote itself. My hand could hardly keep pace. I did not have to correct anything. Well... that seldom happens to you." The poem condemned the bombing raids by pro-Nationalist German pilots of the Condor Legion. Inspired, according Jack Cope, by Krige's upbringing within Afrikaner Calvinism and its traditional hostility to an allegedly corrupt Pre-Reformation Church, Lied van die fascistiese bomwerpers also leveled savage attacks against Roman Catholicism.

According to Jack Cope, "The poem starts on a note of military pride – the eyes of the Fascist pilots fixed on themselves in their joyful and triumphant, their holy task. The tone of bitter irony rises as the pace becomes faster, climbing to height after height of savagery and contempt. The lines of the Latin liturgy become mixed with the brutal exultation of the mercenaries raining down death from their safe altitude. The Bible itself is rolled in the blood. The lovely place-names of Spain rise in gleams above the dust and smoke. In the end the hymn becomes an insane scream of violence and bloody destruction mocking even the Crucifixion."

As no Afrikaans journal dared to publish it, Uys Krige's Lied van die fascistiese bomwerpers appeared in the Forum, a Left-leaning literary journal published in English. Krige's poem elicited vehement condemnations from both extreme Afrikaner nationalists and from the Catholic Church in South Africa, which "protested vehemently" called Krige's poem sacrilegious. Krige responded by asking whether South African Catholics approved of the Nationalist's dismantling of what he considered the lawful Spanish Government or in the ongoing White Terror.

During World War II, Krige was a war correspondent with the South African Army during the Abyssinian Campaign and the North African Campaign. Captured at the Battle of Tobruk in 1941, he was sent to a POW camp in Fascist Italy from which he escaped after the overthrow of Benito Mussolini two years later. Krige was then smuggled back to Allied lines with the help of the Italian Resistance. Krige returned to South Africa able to speak fluent Italian. Krige subsequently wrote and published the English language war memoir, The Way Out, as well as war poetry and short stories.

After the National Party took power over South Africa in 1948, Krige actively campaigned as part of the Torch Commando alongside former RAF flying ace Sailor Malan and many other Afrikaner World War II veterans against the new Government's plans to disenfranchise Coloured voters.

In May 1952, Krige had lunch in London with fellow South African dissident writers Roy Campbell, Laurens van der Post, Enslin du Plessis, and Alan Paton. During the lunch, the five men composed and signed an open letter to the South African Government, in which they again denounced the ruling National Party's plans to disenfranchise Coloured voters. The letter was subsequently published by several South African newspapers.

In 1958, Krige, in spite of or because of his opposition to the National Party-dominated Government, was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Natal.

Beginning during the late 1950s and '60s, Krige served as a mentor to many fellow members of Cape Town's racially mixed literary bohemia, which gathered in the beach-side suburb of Clifton. Due in large part to Krige's influence, membership in both literary bohemia and in the literary movement known as Die Sestigers ("The Writers of the Sixties") became synonymous with public opposition to both the National Party and Apartheid.

The most famous of Krige's proteges was Ingrid Jonker and Krige played a major role in Jonker's transformation from the dutiful daughter of a National Party MP into a vocal critic of the National Party's policies of censorship and apartheid. When Jonker committed suicide by drowning in 1965, Krige spoke at her secular funeral.

Uys Krige also co-edited The Penguin Book of South African Verse (1968) with Jack Cope.

In an interview later in life, Krige told Jack Cope, "One of the biggest mistakes is to identify the Afrikaans language with the Nationalist Party."

Uys Krige died near Hermanus in the Cape Province in 1987, aged 77.