Peter Hathaway Capstick describes a sjambok as a short swordlike whip made from rhino pizzle leather that could lay a man open like a straight razor.

[5] The name seems to have originated as cambuk in Indonesia, where it was the name of a wooden rod for punishing slaves, where it was possibly derived from the Persian chabouk or chabuk.

When Malay slaves arrived in South Africa in the 1800s, the instrument and its name were imported with them, the material was changed to hide, and the name was finally incorporated into Afrikaans, spelled as sambok.

[6] In Willard Price's Elephant Adventure, the cruel Arab slaver known as the Thunder Man enjoys flogging captives with a sjambok made from hippopotamus hide.

In the novel V. by Thomas Pynchon the Sjambok is a major feature in the narrative of the Herero Wars, where it serves as a symbol for the violence and sexual perversion of the German and European colonizers.