MINA MAGERMAN A Khoisan woman far from home

A violent encounter at a street canteen on Grahamstown’s High Street at the Cape Colony in February 1830 irrevocably changed the lives of the three Khoisan (Indigenous) women involved. One was left for dead; another spent several months in jail; and a third, Mina Magerman, became the only Khoisan woman known to have been transported as a convict to the Australian colonies.

In addition to shipping convicts to Australia from England, Ireland and Scotland, the British used transportation as a punishment to subdue and control their colonial populations, including Indigenous people. Australian Aboriginal people and Māori men from New Zealand ended up serving time as convicts.