Saartjie's Homecoming

It must have been a exciting idea for Saartjie Bartman.

Born in 1789 into the Griqua tribe of South Africa's eastern Cape, the Khoisan woman was orphaned in an early raid and was later baptized Saartjie Baartman (her name means "little Sarah" in Afrikaans). She was working for a local farmer near Cape Town, South Africa when her unusual appearance attracted the attention of a visiting ship's surgeon, William Dunlop. Saartjie's enlarged buttocks and oversized labia intrigued Dunlop and he suggested that he take her to England to be studied. Hendrick Cezar, brother of Saartjie's employer, saw an opportunity for fame and fortune and was able to overcame any resistance that she might have had to the idea of being put on display. Given her life of poverty, the prospect of escaping it and traveling abroad must have seemed impossible to resist. Dunlop and Cezar asked Lord Caledon, then-governor of the Cape, for permission to make the trip (to the governor's credit, he would later regret giving his permission). Saartjie had no idea when she left South Africa that she would never see her homeland again.

Arriving in England in 1810, Saartjie was examined by some of the leading anatomists of the time. Her unusual genital condition was formally termed the "Hottentot apron" (Hottentot being an archaic name for Khoisan). Seen by the public as nothing more than a sexual freak, she was placed on public display in Piccadilly and quickly dubbed the "Hottentot Venus". According to contemporary accounts, Saartjie was often "exhibited like a wild beast" (usually in a cage) and forced to parade almost naked before gawking audiences. Many spectators poked her with sticks to ensure that she was "all real" and she was often left in tears due to the pain and humiliation.

Complaints over the outrageous nature of Saartjie's exploitation led to a court hearing. After Saartjie testified in perfect Dutch that she was not being abused and would receive half of all the profits from her showings, the case was dismissed. The publicity of the trial and continuing controversy of her exhibition led to Sartjie being taken to France in 1814 where things worsened quickly (slavery was still legal there). Whatever Saartjie's handlers may have promised her, she ended up getting very little money for herself.

At some point, Dunlop and Cezar dropped out of the picture and Saartjie became the property of an animal handler named Reaux. Her showings in Paris were as popular as they had been in London and she was examined by many French anatomists, including Georges Cuvier. Numerous scientific papers were written about the "Hottentot Venus" that emphasized prevailing notions of racial superiority. Saartjie's "primitive anatomy" was contrasted with the "refined" European anatomy and reinforced the idea that Europeans were naturally more advanced. A comic opera was even written about her titled "The Hottentot Venus".

Despite her popularity, Saartjie's misery and humiliation caused her to sink into alcoholism. Returning home was out of the question due to the travel expenses involved. Due to her poverty, she eventually worked as a prostitute to support herself. Saartjie's health deteriorated and she died on January 1, 1816 (probably of pneumonia) but the exploitation didn't end with her death. Her body was dissected by Georges Cuvier and a wax replica of her body was made. Saartjie's skeleton,brain and genitalia went on exhibit in Paris' Musee de l'Homme and remained there until 1974 when they were finally removed from public view.

Over the years, there were repeated pleas for the return to Saartjie's remains to South Africa but interest in the case intensified after Stephen Jay Gould wrote an article on her in 1985. Finally, following pressure from the South African government and debates in France's National Assembly, permission to return the remains was given in 2002. On May 6 of that year, Saartjie Baartman's remains were returned to South Africa and, in a moving ceremony, she was laid to rest on August 9 (National Women's Day in South Africa) in the Gamtoos River valley of the Eastern Cape.

In 1999, the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children was first opened in Capetown, South Africa as a multi-disciplinary centre for abused women and children. One of the high points of my recent trip to South Africa was a visit to the Centre to talk to the staff and hear the story of one of the women who had overcome domestic abuse with the centre's help. In addition to providing a residential shelter for women and children, the centre supplies vocational and medical assistance for dealing with trauma, AIDS, substance abuse and sexual assault. They also have the only support program for transgendered people in all of Africa.

The centre was named for Saartjie Baartman to highlight her status as an icon to the Khoisan and also as a symbol for the abuse and exploitation that women often experience. It represents a fitting tribute to one of the most memorable victims of 19th century racism.

Click here to read more about the Saartjie Baartman Centre or to make a donation

Comments

[Deela Khan]

I'm posting the tribute I wrote for Saartjie's funeral so that it reach many more people:

IN THE BELLY OF AN IRON BIRD,
SHE COMES FLYING

For Saartjie Baartman

Died 1 January 1816
Born in 1789 (the year of the French Revolution)

From the ancestral mountains,
across streams, rivers, koppies and rocks,
across the mangled vegetation of territory
bloodied and dislocated by warfare,
across the Gamtoosvallei, valley of your conception,
your birth, your years of play and wonder,
your young motherhood, widowhood, your wells of grief,
your deaths, stillbirths and losses,
from the inconsolable hollow of weeping and explosions of laughter,
you came galloping, running, striding toward the Cape with its rumours of good
hope, its towering mountains, its sky clouded with gulls, its sea fecund with fish.

Amidst the river of stars sailed the moon
preening its amber-gold fullness at the hour of your arrival.
Amidst the fires and songs, the odour of herbs and thundering drums,
the spirits of the caves and ravines and canyons echoed your presence.
You had arrived. Away from your arrowed memories of warriors falling, of speared bulleted bodies falling, close to the mountain with its aloes and proteas and buchu and khaki-bos, you had come to stay. But stay, you could not our ancestral wanderer.

Your seduction began with the arrival of a big ship in the harbour.
You felt the eyes of the brothers on your body.
They flooded your head with images of you on the ship.
They whispered promises of the ship’s doctor
chaperoning you to London where the streets were paved with gold.
They sold images of you welcomed as Venus, voluptuous queen of love,
every inch of your body cloaked in a mystique
northern women cannot dream to possess.
They captured your imagination with dreams
of music and song, palatial houses and finery.

On the wounded day you bought their dream,
Saartjie, you boarded the ship and went sailing
towards the unfamiliar jeweled mountains of the north.
Sailing away from the harbour with its mountains, its cliffs,
Its gulls, its seals, its raging sea and kindred spirits,
Your eyes wrapped around so much beauty,
stored it in your heart for moments of great longing.

You discovered their lies on the high seas.
Where were your quarters?
Where did you sleep?
You shouted out loud, they could not hear you.
You talked to the wind, the waves, the stars and the healing
moon who understood tongues as no humans could.
You screamed out your bondage
in these nights of affliction you were forced to ride.
You rode fears, breakers, bodies as you sailed to the strange Jerusalem,
With its strange mountains and strange tongues.

Towards London you strode in the Age of Reason
Leaving behind your ship of tears, heartbreak and humiliation.
You came striding into the city where houses were palaces,
rocks were diamonds, kerb stones, slabs of gold.
You cursed the men who whispered
those lies with no ears to hear you.
Only the language of needle-and-bottle was understood
by the good doctor; anodynes to erase words, rid bodies of pain.

Your baptism of fire and pain under grey London skies had begun.
The sun hid its face when first you lost your clothes
as you did your song and dance sequence under feathers,
in cages with or without animals, in bars, on campuses,
on soapbox stages, in Piccadilly, in the streets of London.

Civilized English folk came rushing to view the freak.
Men and women and dogs and lovers and children poked your
body with alarmed fingers, with sticks.
They gawked, they laughed, they talked.
Their faces, their horrible voices, their eyes
burned into your anatomy like flames and made you scream.
This was not the dream you were promised.
The great cavern of loneliness was starting to envelope you-
you were entering that sacred ground that animals
retreated to in the absence of compassion.

Four years in London allowed you to learn the peculiar tongue
spoken around you, but understand, you could not, these peculiar
beings who controlled the destinies of those they saw as lesser beings.
Abolitionists fought to free you from your bonds of shame and torture.
But crooked custodians of justice proved you were not coerced,
You prospered they argued, you loved your work!
But soon you were sold to the French.
To new masters you were sent sailing to France,
hoping you were sailing home,
hoping they were setting you free,
but you landed in a circus where caged beasts shared your misery.
Like circus animals you were taught a routine.
Stripped to the skin,
to the music you had to dance, dance, dance
and if you could dance no more, you were beaten with a stick.
If you resisted, screamed, refused to sing, you were whipped.

The mystery of your body, with its generous contours
Captured the imaginations of European scientists,
doctors, artists and men from all walks of life.
It was the allure of the exotic that drove them to want you,
To want to know you,
To break your body as though you’d never been.

And when illness racked your body in your lonely shelter
in the land of strange spirits, you hauled from your heart the stored
images of your kin, of Table Mountain, of the Gamtoos Valley.

When Death entered with a handless knock that shattered
your panes and lifted your covers,
when she entered with the soundless rustle of her robes, you welcomed her
and your accompanying ancestors but said you could not leave your body there.
You did not trust the Baron Georges Cuvier.
Honouring your wish Death and your ancestors left you to guard
your body in the land of strangers
till the hour of your return.

Two portraits of you in the nude decorate the walls of the Louvre.
Cuvier craved an exhibit, a Hottentot Venus for the Musee de l’Homme.
Dead as you were, to them, you were still a freak,
an anthropological curiosity.
Of you he made a mould, he dissected you,
preserved your brain, skeleton and genitalia for posterity.

In the womb of that tomb filled with silent bones,
You remained for 186 years
still shouting, howling, screaming your great yearning to go home.

The hour of your return has dawned in the Age of Aquarius.
In the belly of an iron bird you come flying,
across Europe, across Africa, towards the southern tip.
Above banks of clouds, hailstorms, skyscrapers, seas,
rivers, mountain ranges and rift-valleys
You come flying
You come flying home.

Deela Khan, 3August, 2002

[Romeo Vitelli]

Thank you for posting that.