Johannesburg - An investigation to get the remains of a 240-year-old Khoisan chief repatriated from Australia is under way, the National Heritage Council (NHC) said on Sunday.
“Chief David Stuurman was one of the few known people who successfully escaped more than once from Robben Island,” said NHC spokesperson Danny Goulkan.
He said the chief was incarcerated there for his persistent fight against colonialism as early as around 1808 and 1809.
Stuurman died in the General Hospital in Sydney in 1830 after travelling on a convict ship to the continent.
“We are now working on a programme of bringing back his human remains,” said Goulkan.
The NHC was meeting with a team of community members, including descendants and researchers, and hoped to assist them to bring back Stuurman – as well as the remains of another Khoisan man, Jantjie Piet.
The council would approach other organisations, including the SA Heritage Resources Agency and the National Prosecutions Authority unit which deals with international repatriation, to assist.
Goulkan said there were unconfirmed locations in Sydney where Stuurman and Piet could possibly be buried, but DNA testing would help confirm where their remains were.
Research indicated that both Stuurman and Piet – along with 10 other South Africans – were on the convict ship Brampton that reached Sydney in April 1823.
A meeting would be held at the South End Museum in Port Elizabeth to discuss current research around the two Khoisan men today.
If Stuurman and Piet are repatriated, they would join several other Khoisan individuals who have been returned to South Africa in recent years.
In April last year, the remains of Khoisan couple Klaas and Trooi Pienaar were returned to South Africa from Austria. In 1909, their bodies were exhumed by Austrian anthropologist Rudolf Poch, who claimed to be doing research on dwarfism.
Poch also took other human remains, as well as San rock paintings, to Austria.
The South African government negotiated for more than four years to have the couple’s remains returned, together with other artefacts taken by Poch.
They joined another famous Khoisan: Hottentot Sarah Baartman.
A slave, she was sent to England in 1810 for exhibition.
Four years later she was sold to a Frenchman, who took her to France, where she died in 1815.
Her skeleton, preserved genitals and brain were handed over to a museum in Paris, where they were displayed.
While there were calls for her remains to be returned to her homeland from as early as the 1940s, it was former president Nelson Mandela’s request to the French government in the mid-1990s that got the ball rolling.
The French finally agreed to the request on March 6, 2002, and her remains were repatriated two months later. - The Star