Sjambok
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A sjambok or litupa is a type of single-tail whip made of rhinoceros or hippopotamus hide, used in Africa, especially in South Africa. It is a very painful type of whip because it's comparatively heavyweight and stiff, and can break the delinquent's skin when used for corporal punishment.
A strip of the animal's hide is cut and carved into a strip 3 to 5 feet (0.91 to 1.5 m) long, tapering from about 1 inch (25 mm) thick at the handle to about 3⁄8 inch (9.5 mm) at the tip. This strip is then rolled (possibly between heavy metal plates) until reaching a near circular form. It is then soaked in salt for about a month. The resulting whip is as flexible as whalebone, and very tough.
The sjambok was mainly used for discipline in school/home or prison but was also reported being used for self defense against snakes and other wild animals when traveling in the bush/wild on foot.
A plastic version was made for the South African Police Service, which is used for riot control.
The sjambok in literature[edit]
Use of the sjambok for corporal punishment is mentioned, for example, in the novel The Power of One, where the protagonist, a then 5-year-old boy, is beaten with a sjambok in his boarding school for wetting his bed.
Mainstream films and spanking videos[edit]
In the British television film The Happy Valley (1987), a 15-year-old girl in Kenya (1930s) is beaten cruelly with a sjambok.
Garden Party is a period-piece spanking video by Lupus Pictures set in the 1900s. Adele Haze plays a maid who is caned and then whipped 35 times with what appears to be a leather sjambok.
Links[edit]
- Garden Party Lupus Pictures (view film online)
See also[edit]
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