Date:          Thursday, 17 October 2019                             Time:  19:30

Venue:       The auditorium, Roedean School,

                   35 Princess of Wales Terrace, Parktown, Johannesburg

Charge:      Members: free    Non-members:  R30    

In 1699, revered eastern Indonesian Sufi scholar and political exile, Shaykh Yusuf of Makassar, passed away at his place of banishment at the Cape of Good Hope. Five years later, following petitions for his posthumous return to the East Indies, his remains were exhumed and sent back to the island of Sulawesi on a Dutch East India Company vessel. His place of burial in Indonesia remains a hub of spiritual and economic activity. It has also become a site of contested history and memory. This talk will explore the gravesite’s development, placing it within a transoceanic sacred geography.

Saarah Jappie was born in South Africa and raised in Sydney, Australia. She currently lectures in History at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her interdisciplinary research explores the afterlives of early modern exile and slavery in the Indian Ocean world, wit h a focus on written culture and sacred geographies in the contexts of island Southeast Asia and Southern Africa. Before joining Wits she completed her PhD in History at Princeton University. Alongside her academic projects Saarah has contributed to public history and art initiatives, and has also written on history and heritage for popular publications internationally.