THE SAVAGELY SUPPRESSED LIFE OF THE AFRICAN BEAUTY THAT HAUNTS US

SARA BAARTHMAN

It was in the beginning of the 18TH a young woman coming from far away. Both a servant and the greatest attraction. 

In whole her life, she was Like a tool in a song and inaudible like the emotions in the book. She is been a woman and she has been an ape bought and sold like an commodity. 

How could the same person play so many different parts? She was like a beast, drown, measured and chopped, and preciously preserved in a French museum. Even in her death, she was given no rest. 

Probably you might not have heard her name but you might have heard of the word “HOTTENTOT VENUS”. A disrespectful name that symbolizes degradation of colonization, lost children, exile, expropriations of female labor and the sexual and economic exploitation of black women by men, (white and black men). 

Who is she?

Sara Baarthman, the first black woman known to be subjected to human sexual trafficking. 

Born in 1789 at Gamtoos River, now known as Eastern River in South Africa, from a member of the Gonaqua sub group of the Khoikhoi. Sara grew up on a colonial farm working as servant. Her mother died when she was age two while he father who was a cattle ridder died when she was still a young girl. 

In her teenage years, she got married to a Khoikhoi man who was a drummer. They had a child together who died shortly after birth. When she turned 16, her husband was murdered by Dutch colonist. 

Soon after she was sold into slave slavery to a trader named Pieter Willem Cezar, who took her to Cape Town and became a domestic slave for his brother, Hendrik. 

At 21 years and illiterate, Sara supposedly signed a contract with William Dunlip, a physician who was a friend of Cezar brothers. This contract required her to travel with the Cezar brothers and Dunlop to England and Ireland where she would work as a domestic servant since technically slavery had been abolished in Great Britain. Additionally, she would be exhibited for entertainment purposes. Baartman would receive a portion of earnings from her exhibitions and would be allowed to return to South Africa after five years. However, the contract was false on all details and her enslavement continued for the remainder of her life.

                                                                                

Baartman was first exhibited in London in the Egyptian Hall at Piccadilly Circus on November 24, 1810. Her public treatment, however, quickly drew the attention of British abolitionists who charged Dunlop and the Cezars with holding Baartman against her will. The court ruled against Baartman after Pieter Cezar produced the contract that had been signed by Baartman. Baartman also testified that she was not being mistreated. 

The publicity generated by the court trial increased Baartman’s popularity as an exhibit. She was taken on tours throughout England and by 1812 as far away as Limerick, Ireland. 

In September 1814, after staying four years in Great Britain, Baartman was taken to France and sold to S. Reaux, an exhibitor who showcased animals. He put Baartman on public display in and around Paris, often at the Palais Royal. He also allowed her to be sexually abused by patrons willing to pay for her defilement. Reaux garnered considerable profit due to the public’s fascination with Baartman’s body. 

Sara Baartman died in Paris on December 29, 1815 at the age of 26 for unknown reasons. Even after her death, many of her body parts would go on display at the Musée de l’Homme (Museum of Man), in Paris to support racist theories about people of African ancestry. Some of the body parts remained on display until 1974. 

FINALLY, In 1994 South African President Nelson Mandela formally requested that Baartman’s remains to be returned to South Africa. On March 6, 2002, her remains were returned and laid to rest at Hankey in the Eastern Cape Province.

 Sadly, today, her life story is constantly repeated in the 21st century, in our barbaric and savage world. 

For more, watch the movie BLACK VENUS (2010)