Swartbooij and Titus

In a work of historical fiction, part prose, part poetry, South African writer Karen Jennings reimagines the story of Swartbooij and his son Titus, loyal Khoisan servants to the colonists who, once betrayed, became bitter enemies.

In 1739 ten settler farmers with ox wagons and trading goods, and several Khoisan servants, spent a month with the Groot Namaqua at the kraal of Chief Gal. Bribed with promises of cattle, the servants broke into the kraal. Several people died, including the Chief. When the settlers reneged on their promise Swartbooij and Titus retaliated by inciting raids on the settler community. The ensuing cycles of revenge eventually led to a brutal massacre of Khoisan women and children.

Karen Jennings was born in Cape Town in 1982. She is the author of the novels Crooked Seeds, An Island, Finding Soutbek, Travels with My Father – an autobiographical novel and Upturned Earth; the short story collection Away from the Dead, and the poetry collection Space Inhabited by Echoes. From 2022 to 2024 she was writer-in-residence as a post-doctoral fellow at the Laboratory for the Economics of Africa’s Past, Stellenbosch University, where she came across the story of Swartbooij and Titus.