About Sarah Baartman and How
Blacks were Abused (PHOTOS
+VIDEO)
This is a very interesting story.
Funny how I never knew about
her until today when I came
across this article that I just had
to read, and then share. It’s
kinda interesting how some of us
just go through life not knowing
how we got to where we are, and
who made it happen. Most of us
preferred to remain oblivious to
the history. But if you are one of
those who are curious about the
past and keen on making the
future better, then this story is
for you. Happy viewing!
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’Homme in 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 –
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