"20 rigs dollars reward. Ran away on the 8th of January on his return from Cape Town. Male slave named Adam of the Cape. 23 years. Brown complexion. Thick woolly hair. Hollow eyes. Thick upper lip and a slight beard. Resembles much of bastard Hottentot. Had on a drab hat, a gray jacket with red lining, white shirt, moleskin trousers."
Newspaper advertisements from South African 'owners' looking for runaway enslaved people were often incredibly detailed. In the absence of other information about these people, who were often excluded from censuses and reports and underrepresented in archival records, the newspaper advertisements constitute a wealth of information on the economic, social, demographic and labour history of the Cape Colony and South Africa, among other things.
Reconstructed portraits
At Stellenbosch University in South Africa, a research team examined advertisements in De Suid-Afrikaan and the Government Gazette, between 1830 and 1842. To communicate the newspaper research to a wider audience, two forensic draftsmen reconstructed the portraits of enslaved people based on their description in the newspaper. The process was captured in the short documentary Fugitives and resulted in the exhibition Charting the Uncharted, on display at Gallery University Stellenbosch from 11 February to 27 March.