I first read about Sarah Baartman, very casually and in passing, many years ago. I didn’t know her by her real name. Rather, I knew her as the ‘Hottentot Venus.’
Not
until recently, when I stumbled upon a historic film about her, was I
filled with rage about the injustice she suffered in the hands of the
Europeans. Sometimes, I find it difficult to imagine why the early
Europeans saw us, Africans as savages…when indeed they were the true
perverts and savages. You need to see the way those white men leered at
her with lustful eyes.
I
have taken time to research on Sarah Baartman. The most comprehensive
report comes from SouthAfrica.Info. I have taken the liberty of culling
their report so that we could all learn about this incredible South
African woman from the Khoisan tribe who was mistaken for a freak
because she had very big hips, buttocks and an enlarged VJJ.
Culled From, SouthAfrica.Info:
Sarah Baartman, displayed as a freak
because of her unusual physical features, was finally laid to rest 187
years after she left Cape Town for London. Her remains were buried on
Women’s Day, 9 August 2002, in the area of her birth, the Gamtoos River
Valley in the Eastern Cape.
Baartman was born in 1789. She was
working as a slave in Cape Town when she was “discovered” by British
ship’s doctor William Dunlop, who persuaded her to travel with him to
England. We’ll never know what she had in mind when she stepped on board
– of her own free will – a ship for London.
But it’s clear what Dunlop had in mind –
to display her as a “freak”, a “scientific curiosity”, and make money
from these shows, some of which he promised to give to her.
Baartman had unusually large buttocks
and genitals, and in the early 1800s Europeans were arrogantly obsessed
with their own superiority, and with proving that others, particularly
blacks, were inferior and oversexed.
Baartman’s physical characteristics, not
unusual for Khoisan women, although her features were larger than
normal, were “evidence” of this prejudice, and she was treated like a
freak exhibit in London.
The ‘Hottentot Venus’
She was called the “Hottentot Venus”,
‘Hottentot’ being a name given to people with cattle. They had acquired
these cattle by migrating northwards to Angola and returned to South
Africa with them, about 2 000 years before the first European settlement
at the Cape in 1652. Prior to this, they were indistinguishable from
the Bushmen or San, the first inhabitants of South Africa, who had been
in the region for around 100 000 years as hunter-gatherers.
Khoisan is used to denote their
relationship to the San people. The label “Hottentot” took on derogatory
connotations, and is no longer used.
Venus is the Roman goddess of love, a
cruel reference to Baartman being an object of admiration and adoration
instead of the object of leering and abuse that she became.
She spent four years in London, then
moved to Paris, where she continued her degrading round of shows and
exhibitions. In Paris she attracted the attention of French scientists,
in particular Georges Cuvier.
No one knows if Dunlop was true to his
word and paid Baartman for her “services”, but if he did pay her, it
wasn’t sufficient to buy herself out of the life she was living.
Once the Parisians got tired of the
Baartman show, she was forced to turn to prostitution. She didn’t last
the ravages of a foreign culture and climate, or the further abuse of
her body. She died in 1815, at the age of 25.
The cause of death was given as
“inflammatory and eruptive sickness”, possibly syphilis. Others suggest
she was an alcoholic. Whatever the cause, she lived and died thousands
of kilometres from home and family, in a hostile city, with no means of
getting herself home again.
Cuvier made a plaster cast of her body,
then removed her skeleton and, after removing her brain and genitals,
pickled them and displayed them in bottles at theMusee de l’Hommein Paris.
Some 160 years later they were still on
display, but were finally removed from public view in 1974. In 1994,
then president Nelson Mandela requested that her remains be brought
home.
Other representations were made, but it
took the French government eight years to pass a bill – apparently
worded so as to prevent other countries from claiming the return of
their stolen treasures – to allow their small piece of “scientific
curiosity” to be returned to South Africa.
In January 2002, Sarah Baartman’s
remains were returned and buried on 9 August 2002, on South Africa’s
Women’s Day, at Hankey in the Eastern Cape Province.
Her grave has since been declared a national heritage site.
Marang Setshwaelo, writing for
Africana.com at the time, said Dr Willa Boezak, a Khoisan rights
activist, believed that a poem written by Khoisan descendant Diana
Ferrus in 1998 played a major role in helping bring Baartman home.
Boezak said: “It took the power of a woman, through a simple, loving
poem, to move hard politicians into action.”
Whatever the reason, Sarah Baartman is
home, and has finally had her dignity restored by being buried where she
belongs – far away from where her race and gender were so cruelly
exploited.
WATCH THE MOVIE…
Saartjie Baartman’s Story (Part 1/2)
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