Story of Sarah Bartman

(African woman who was tricked into Slavery and humiliated because she had excessive female genitals)

 Sarah Bartman was born in 1789 at the Ganges River in what is now known as the Eastern Cape.

Sara grew up on a colonial farm where her family most probably worked as servants. Her mother died when she was age two and her father, who was a cattle driver, died when she reached adolescence. 

Sara married a Quaker man who was a drummer, and they had one child together who died shortly after birth due to colonial expansion. The Dutch came into conflict with the Koiki. As a result, people were gradually absorbed into the labor system when she was 16 years old. Sarah’s husband was murdered by Dutch colonists soon after she was sold into slavery to a trader named Peter William Sisa, 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 Saatchi, a Dutch diminutive for Sara. On 29th of October 1810, Sara allegedly signed a contract with an English ship’s surgeon named William Dunlop, who was also a friend of Caesar and his brother Hendrik. Apparently, the terms of her contract were that she would travel with Hendrik Caesar 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, fasces of families experienced financial woes, and it is suspected that they used Sara to earn money. Salaries, large buttocks and unusual colouring made her the object of fascination by the colonial who presumed that they were racially superior. Dunlop wanted Sarah to come to London and become a thing for display. 

She was taken to London, where she was displayed in a building in Piccadilly, the street that was full of various oddities like the NE plus ultra of hideousness and the greatest deformity in the world.

 Englishmen and women paid to see Saras half naked body displayed in a 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 Sisa, the campaign against slavery in Britain was in full swing and as a result, the treatment of Sarah 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 Sarah 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 Sisa sold her to a man who showcased animals.

He exhibited her around Paris and reaped financial benefits from the public’s fascination with Sarah’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.

 Sarah was displayed almost completely naked, wearing little more than a tan loincloth. She was nicknamed Hottentot Venus. Her constant display attracted the attention of George Cuvier, a naturalist. He asked if he would allow Sarah to be studied as a science specimen, to which we agreed.

 As from March 1815, Sarah was studied by French anatomists, zoologists and physiologists. Cuvier concluded that she was a link between animals and humans. Thus, Sarah was used to help emphasize the stereotype that Africans were oversexed and a lesser race. 

Sarah died in 1816 at the age of 26. It is unknown whether she died from alcoholism, smallpox or pneumonia.some sources says she died of heart break and isolation.

 Cuvier immediately obtained her remains from local police 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 Museum until 1974. 

The story of Sara Bertman resurfaced in 1981 when Stephen J, a palaeontologist, wrote about her story in his book. The measure of man where he criticized racial science following the African National Congress ANC victory in the South African elections.

 President Nelson Mandela later requested that the French government return the remains of Sarah Bertman 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 6th of March 2002, Sarah Bartman was brought back to South Africa, where she was buried properly at Hankey in Eastern cape province, on the 9th of August 2002, Women’s Day, a public holiday in South Africa.