ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the interaction between the two principal figures, John Chavafambira and Wulf Sachs. Wulf Sachs’ Black Hamlet is, as the subtitle explains, an account of “The Mind of an African Negro Revealed by Psychoanalysis.” John Chavafambira was an important informant, performing a vital mediating role between Hellman and the Rooiyard community. The origins of Black Hamlet date back to the end of 1933 when Wulf Sachs, a doctor and psychoanalyst, met “John Chavafambira” in a slumyard in downtown Johannesburg, which he calls “Swartyard”. Black Hamlet represents a psychological and anthropological engagement with “the other,” but it is also an account of the way in which two very different individuals confront and attempt to understand each other and themselves. Black Hamlet sought to explore the “working fundamental principles of the mind in its normal state.”.
