Recovering history
A new documentary sheds light on those that lived in history's shadows
The image above is of a boy in the Cape Colony in 1832, when he was 12 years old. In an advert in De Zuid-Afrikaan, a Dutch-language newspaper of the time, it was noted that ‘one of his upper foreteeth is broken, wort on his under lip, mark above one of his eyes, very small mouth’. He was last seen wearing a ‘green velvet jacket, leather trousers, white shirt’, noted the ad.
The boy had run away from his owner, a fugitive, a runaway slave in search of a better life, just like thousands of others before him who had attempted to escape the chains of bondage. We know little else about him but for this ad. Yet combined with many such stories, the research of LEAP PhD student Karl Bergemann begins to reveal more about the lives of these individuals who spent most of their lives in history’s shadows, their thoughts, feelings and experiences unrecorded.
Fugitives is a documentary about the recovery of the lives of the enslaved fugitives of the Cape Colony. When we approached artists last year to translate our quantitative history research to a broader audience, Bergemann requested to work with Kathryn Smith and Pearl Mamathuba, two of South Africa’s leading forensic artists. The idea was to recreate the faces of those that are typically excluded from conventional archives, those that history only remembers through runaway ads in colonial newspapers. And this required forensic expertise.
Says Smith: ‘We call it forensic art. It's probably more accurately referred to as anatomical facial reconstruction when it's not for a forensic case. When you apply these methods in the heritage space, it has been very interesting to compare the ways in which certain individuals have been culturally represented versus what they actually look like.’ Mamathuba adds: ‘I started looking at Asian Renaissance paintings, and that really inspired me. That kind of gives these individuals a sense of personhood.’ The pair initially created ten facial reconstructions, but have since added another five. The hope is, with additional funding, more visuals (and stories) can be brought to life.
The documentary, directed by Philip du Plessis of Blindspot Films, is another way the Biography project hopes that its work reaches a wider audience. It touches on both the creation of the original research, the transformation of that research into art, and then the exhibition of that art (in Stellenbosch and, with the support of the Dutch consul, at the Castle in Cape Town). The aim is to attract more attention to the Cape Colony’s history of slavery, its economic causes and consequences, and to the legacies that still persist. By combining science and art, Fugitives will hopefully be a catalyst for more research (and research funding) to help bring those on the margins of history to life.
LEAP is a research unit at Stellenbosch University dedicated to the study of African economic history. To receive our newsletter (twice a year, the next one is due next week), subscribe at www.leapstellenbosch.org.za. The seventh annual LEAP Lecture will be an in-person event on the 7th of November. If you’d like to attend, please respond to the invite below. The Biography of an Uncharted People project (2018-2022) is an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded project within LEAP. Our closing conference will be held in Stellenbosch from 7 to 8 November 2022.
