Sara Baartman Oddity

As recently as January, 2016 the name of Saartjie Baartman has moved from 19th century curiosity, into popular 21st century culture, and this reason for her notoriety stems from the sexualization of her body. Baartman was born before 1790 in the area now known as the Eastern Cape of Africa, and was a member of the cattle herding Gonaquasub group of the Khoikhoi. Growing up on the colonial farm where her parents worked, Sara was orphaned in adolescence. At age sixteen, she married a Khoikhoi drummer and later gave birth to one child, who died shortly after birth.
As a result of Dutch colonial expansion, the Khoikhoi people were absorbed into the colonial labor system. While still in her sixteenth year, Sara’s husband was murdered by Dutch colonists.
A woman alone, she was sold into slavery to a trader, Pieter Willem Cezar, who took her to Cape Town where she became a domestic servant to his brother. It was during this time that her name was changed to Saartjie, a Dutch diminutive for Sara.
Both the Cezar brothers were known to have been poor, and as a remedy for poverty, they found a way to use Sara to earn money. Because she was illiterate and came from a culture that did not write or keep indexical records, the story of her servitude changed to include an alleged October, 1810 contract with William Dunlop, an English ship surgeon who was also a friend of Cezar brothers. The contract bound Sara to travel with Hendrik Cezar and Dunlop to England and Ireland, where she would work as a domestic servant, and be exhibited for entertainment purposes. For this service, she was to receive a portion of the earnings from her exhibitions and be allowed to return to South Africa after five years.
Sara Baartman’s large buttocks and unusual colouring made her the object of fascination by the colonial Europeans who presumed that they were racially superior.
Dunlop wanted Sara to come to London and become an oddity for display. She was taken to London where she was displayed in a building in Piccadilly, a street that was full of various oddities like “the world’s most hideousness” and “the greatest deformity in the world.” Englishmen and women paid to see Sara’s half naked body displayed in a four-foot tall cage that was about a metre and half high. She became an attraction for people from various parts of
Europe.
During her time with Dunlop and Hendrik Cezar, the campaign against slavery in Britain was in full swing and as a result, the treatment of Baartman was called into question. Her “employers” were brought to trial but faced no real consequences. They produced a document that had allegedly been signed by Sara Baartman and her own testimony which claimed that she was not being mistreated. Her ‘contract’ was, however, amended and she became entitled to ‘better conditions’, greater profit share and warm clothes.
After four years in London, in September 1814, she was transported from England to France, and upon arrival Hendrik Cezar sold her to Reaux, a man who showcased animals. He exhibited her around Paris and reaped financial benefits from the public’s fascination with Sara’s body. He began exhibiting her in a cage alongside a baby rhinoceros. Her “trainer” would order her to sit or stand in a similar way that circus animals are ordered. At times Baartman was displayed almost completely naked, wearing little more than a tan loincloth, and she was only allowed that due to her insistence that she cover what was culturally sacred. She was nicknamed “Hottentot Venus.”

Her constant display attracted the attention of George Cuvier, a naturalist. He asked Reaux if he would allow Sara to be studied as a science specimen to which Reaux agreed. As from March 1815 Sara was studied by French anatomists, zoologists and physiologists. Cuvier concluded that she was a link between animals and humans. Thus, Sara was used to help emphasize the stereotype that Africans were oversexed and a lesser race.
Sara Baartman died in Paris, France in 1816, at the age of 26 and the cause(s) of her death remain unknown, although alcoholism, smallpox, pneumonia, or a sexually transmitted disease have all been postulated.
What is known about her death is that Cuvier obtained her remains and dissected her body. He made a plaster cast of her body, pickled her brain and genitals and placed them into jars which were placed on display at the Musée de l'Homme (Museum of Man) until 1974. The story of Sara Baartman resurfaced in 1981 when palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould, author of The Mismeasure of Man, used her story as a part of his argument and critique of racial science. In January, 2016, it was rumored that pop diva, Beyoncé, in her quest for an Oscar was interested in writing, directing, and starring in a Sara Baartman biopic. The rumors of the film and its production died quickly in the face of harshly critical social and media disdain, and Baartman’s story has been laid to rest.
Following the African National Congress (ANC)’s victory in the South African elections, President Nelson Mandela requested that the French government return the remains of Sara Baartman so that she could be laid to rest. The process took eight years, as the French had to draft a carefully worded bill that would not allow other countries to claim treasures taken by the French. Finally on the sixth of March 2002, Sara Baartman was brought back home to South Africa where she was buried. On 9 August 2002, Women’s
Day, a public holiday in South Africa, Sara was buried at Hankey in the Eastern Cape Province.