Africa’s Indian Ocean in Yvette Christiansë’s "Unconfessed"

Yvette Christianë’s novel Unconfessed approaches the history of slavery at the Cape through the story of Sila, a slave woman incarcerated on Robben Island for the murder of her son Baro. The author’s note at the end of the novel places the narrative within a context of the colonial archive in the form of court records which contain the information that Sila was sentenced to death in 1823 but discovered in a Cape Town gaol by the Superintendent of Police for the Cape Colony in 1825. She was subsequently moved to Robben Island and, through the intervention of the Superintendent, granted a full pardon.