The life of ǀhanǂkass’o is full of the tragedy that characterised the lives of most of the ǀxam who stayed at Mowbray. He was the husband of ǁkabbo’s daughter Ssuobba-ǁkein. Although he was present at the Breakwater Convict Station in 1870 (when he was about 25) and spent a short period at the Bleek house after the completion of his sentence in June 1871, he was not interviewed, and returned to Bushmanland in November that year. He had been imprisoned for two years for stock theft along with ǁkabbo and brother-in-law ’Witbooy Touren’, all members of the gang that was raiding Boer farms in the 1860s. His convict number was 4630.
After ǁkabbo’s death in 1876, Lucy Lloyd arranged for ǀhanǂkass’o and Ssuobba-ǁkein to journey to Cape Town from Van Wyksvlei near Kenhardt and join the Bleek household. The journey was traumatic. The two departed in April 1877 with an infant child, leaving behind their young son, ǃhu ǃhun, in Van Wyksvlei with friends. As a result of an incident where she was badly beaten by a policeman, Ssuobba-ǁkein died in Beaufort West, after a long stay there, in December 1877. Her and ǀhanǂkass’o’s baby also died soon after, apparently as a result of the same attack.
Journeying on alone, ǀhanǂkass’o eventually arrived in Mowbray on 10 January 1878. During his stay Lucy Lloyd tried unsuccessfully to arrange for his surviving child (who was indentured to a farmer) to be brought to him, so he returned to Bushmanland in December 1879, much to Lloyd and her family’s regret. Word was later sent to Mowbray of his safe return to Kenhardt by the border magistrate, JH Scott.
ǀhanǂkass’o was a responsive and enthusiastic narrator making a major contribution to the archive. He also helped the Bleek and Lloyd family with practical matters such as the maintenance of the household and appeared to play a fatherly role to the orphaned ǃkun boys. He longed to converse in his own language and with his own people, and Lucy tried to organise a ǀxam-speaking family to be sent to Mowbray to provide ǀhanǂkass’o with some companionship. A ’Korana-Hottentot’ (or ǃora) family was sent in error, but they, nonetheless, had to be supported and cared for for almost 12 months.
ǀhanǂkass’o provided the second-largest number of narratives and notebooks (32 of them in all were taken by Lloyd) revealing a great diversity of the richness of his people’s practices, ideas and beliefs, as well as insight into the dire circumstances that pertained in his home lands. He encouraged Lloyd in her wish to visit his homeland, telling her he would “be as careful for us as up there as we were for him down here” (C15.14) but she felt she could not leave her responsibilities, adding that she “feared one would be likely to see a good deal that would give much heartache without the power to make things better.” His date and place of death is unknown.