Sarah Baartman! The “First Known Black Female Victim Of Trafficking, The Degrading of A Black Woman - A Touching Story Of Racism,Sexism, And Man's Inhumanity To Man

“We cannot undo the damage that was done to her. But at least we can summon the courage to speak the naked but healing truth that must comfort her wherever she may be.” –Thabo Mbeki

Sarah Baartman, the “first known Black female victim of trafficking,” died on 29 December 1815. A Khoi-san woman of South Africa, she was lured to Europe with the promise of fame and riches. She was transported to England in 1810 and exhibited on stage in a cage as a freak known as the Hottentot Venus. A court battle waged by abolitionists to free her from her exhibitors failed. In 1814 she was taken to France, and became the object of scientific and medical research that formed the bedrock of European sick ideas about black female sexuality. After her death, her brain, skeleton and sexual organs remained on display in a Paris museum until 1974 and were not repatriated and buried until 2002. Today she is seen by many as the epitome of colonial exploitation and racism, of the ridicule and commodification of Black people.

It is believed that Sarah Baartman, also known as Sara or Saartjie, was born in South Africa’s Eastern Cape in 1789. She belonged to the cattle-herding Gonaquasub group of the Khoikhoi. Her mother died when she was aged two and her father, who was a cattle driver, died when she reached adolescence. Baartman married a Khoikhoi man who was a drummer and they had one child together who died shortly after birth. When she was sixteen years old her fiancé was murdered by Dutch colonists. Soon after, she was sold into slavery to a trader named Pieter Willem Cezar, who took her to Cape Town where she became a domestic servant to his brother. It was during this time that she was given the name ‘Saartjie’, a Dutch diminutive for Sara.

On 29 October 1810, although illiterate, Baartman allegedly ‘signed’ a contract with an English ship surgeon named William Dunlop who was also a friend of Cezar and his brother Hendrik. Apparently, the terms of her contract were that she would travel with Hendrik Cezar and Dunlop to England and Ireland to work as a domestic servant, and be exhibited for entertainment purposes. She was to receive a ‘portion of earnings’ from her exhibitions and be allowed to return to South Africa after five years. Two reasons make her signing appear dubious. The first is that she was illiterate and came from a cultural tradition that did not write or keep records. Secondly, the Cezar families experienced financial woes and it is suspected that they used Baartman to earn money, because she had what was called “steatopygia”, resulting in extremely protuberant buttocks due to a build-up of fat.

“You have to remember that, at the time, it was highly fashionable and desirable for women to have large bottoms, so lots of people envied what she had naturally, without having to accentuate her figure,” says Rachel Holmes, author of The Hottentot Venus: The Life and Death of Saartjie Baartman.

Baartman was exhibited at a venue in London after her arrival. For 2 shillings, from 1pm to 5pm, at 225 Piccadilly, people could witness Baartman displayed as animal-like and exotic. On stage she wore skin-tight, flesh-coloured clothing, as well as beads and feathers, and smoked a pipe. She was forced to show off her derrière in a cage that was about a metre and half high. Wealthy customers could pay for private demonstrations in their homes, with their guests allowed to touch her.

Baartman’s promoters nicknamed her the “Hottentot Venus”, with “hottentot” – now seen as derogatory – then being used in Dutch to describe the Khoikhoi and San, who together make up the peoples known as the Khoisan.

Watch video for the full story..............................