THE DOUBLE PERSONA OF SARA BAARTMAN: Gender, ‘Race,’ Politics and Colonialism

A Life Fractured by the Gaze

Sara Baartman, also known as Saartjie, a beautiful black woman raised in the historic Sunland of the African race, was not born an emblem of womanhood, a scientific specimen, or a colonial curiosity. She was a human being, a female gender, most importantly of the Khoikhoi clan, who lived in a tumultuous era of European colonial expansion and exploitation.

Unfortunately for her, and many of her kinds during the brutal period of colonial rule whence human were subjected to the bare minimum by other humans who think they are far superior, her identity and humanity were overshadowed by her beauty.

Sara's body became a canvas for the prejudices and fascinations of 19th-century Europe. Baartman's life, though tragically brief, unfolded in two contrasting worlds, her native South Africa and Europe, each marked by its own systems of oppression. Through her story, the intersection of gender, race, politics, and colonialism comes into sharp focus, offering a powerful lens through which to examine the past and its enduring impact on the present.

The Early Years: Gendered Realities in Colonial South Africa

Baartman was born in the late 1780s, close to the Gamtoos River in what is now South Africa, specifically the Khoikhoi race, whose culture had already been displaced by the Dutch colonial masters. Cape had turned into a centre of labor servitude, colonial appropriation of land and ultimately a cultural obliteration. As a woman of the Khoikhoi, Baartman likely faced dual marginalization; her gender placed her as a target of patriarchy, her ethnicity placed her as a subject of racism.

Sara Baartman in her early age, saw firsthand the ugliness of the colonial world, where blacks were reduced to objects and labor force. The Khoikhoi women became subjugated to settlers and their corporeal work was demanded of them. Baartman’s life path, however, would turn even further when her body was considered no longer as a means of work but of entertainment.

The European Obsession with the "Exotic"

In 1810, Baartman was brought to London under the pretense of employment and opportunity. William Dunlop, a British doctor, convinced her to leave South Africa, promising wealth and a better life. Instead, she was paraded as the “Hottentot Venus,” a spectacle for British audiences fascinated by her physical features, particularly her steatopygia, which European pseudoscience deemed an anatomical anomaly.

Her body became the subject of public gawking and objectification in ways that blended entertainment with scientific racism. European audiences fetishised her as an "exotic" specimen, projecting fantasies and biases onto her figure. For the gorgeous Baartman, her body was completely not her own; it had become a lab rat, a battleground of European ideologies, where gendered and racialized narratives intersected.

Gender and the "Colonial Gaze"

The colonial gaze was deeply gendered. Baartman was not just seen as a representative of her race but also as a hypersexualized figure. European men who pretended to be making scientific study of her bodily traits and behaviors used her as a tool to perpetuate stereotype of African women as sexually deviant and barbaric. This dehumanization was attributed to emerging ‘scientific’ disciplines such as phrenology and comparative anatomy, which attempted to categorize mankind along the racial line with Caucasians at the pinnacle.

Sara Baartman’s exploitation also sheds light on the ways colonialism intersected with gender. While male African figures were often portrayed as physically strong but intellectually inferior, African women like Baartman were both hypersexualized and infantilized. This duality served colonial powers by justifying their domination over African peoples, painting them as both desirable and incapable of self-governance.

Politics and the Public Display of Power

Baartman's exhibitions were not just about entertainment; they were political acts. They reinforced European narratives of superiority and the "civilizing" mission of colonialism. By displaying Baartman as a curiosity, colonial powers asserted their dominion over African bodies and cultures, framing their conquest as an exploration of the "unknown."

Her excapades also coincided with the rise of abolitionist movements in Britain. While some abolitionists condemned her treatment, others used her image to further their agendas, often perpetuating the same racial stereotypes they sought to challenge. Baartman’s plight thus became a pawn in broader political debates about race, morality, and empire.

The French Chapter: From Exhibit to Specimen

In 1814, Sara Baartman was sold to a French animal trainer and was subsequently moved to Paris where her affairs and degradation deepened. Amidst being displayed next in freak show tents, she also found herself the subject of scientific analysis. While she was alive, anatomist and paleontologist, Georges Cuvier, subjected her to further examinations of her body for the purpose of proving his theories of racial differences.

Cuvier’s studies framed Baartman as a link between humans and animals, further entrenching the dehumanizing narrative of racial science. These “scientific” conclusions were disseminated across Europe, influencing public perceptions of African peoples for decades to come. Even in death, Baartman was not spared; her skeleton, preserved genitals, and a plaster cast of her body were displayed in museums, reducing her to a permanent object of study and voyeurism.

The Dual Legacy of Sara Baartman

Baartman’s story embodies the intersection of multiple forms of oppression: colonialism, racism, sexism, and classism. Her life and death became symbols of how these forces work together to dehumanize and exploit marginalized groups.

A Symbol of Resistance: In the course of the later years of the 20th century, the like activists and scholars, retrospect Sara’s story as a tool or coping mechanism against colonialization and male oppression. Her remains, which had been exhibited in museums in France for more than a century, were at the centre of an aggressive drive for the restoration of the body to its ancestral homeland. In December 2002, her remains were returned to South Africa where she got a decent burial.

This of course was not merely an act of repatriation as symbols of reparation and acknowledgment of Baartman’s humanity but an indictment of the systems that used her. Her narrative is to this day relevant as a protest that demands justice and recognizes colonial impact.

The Contemporary Relevance of Baartman’s Story

Baartman’s life has some valuable lessons that the current society needs to learn. Thus, the dehumanization she undergoes is not in the past, the world today continues the tradition of dehumanization of Black women, the existence of race stereotyping and the use of the bodies of the oppressed.

Intersectionality in Action

Through her profile, Sara Baartman, one gets to appreciate the necessity of the intersection approach to oppression. The positions she occupies cannot be explained simply in terms of race, gender or class; they represent a combination of those factors. He insisted that this intersectionality is a valid concept for mirroring the systemic injustice today.

Reclaiming Narratives: One of the most powerful aspects of Baartman’s legacy is the effort to reclaim her narrative. For too long, her story was told through the lens of those who exploited her, reducing her to a symbol or a specimen. Today, scholars and activists seek to center Baartman’s humanity, exploring her story not as an object lesson in oppression, but as a testament to resilience and dignity.

Africa. Sarah Baartman’s grave is located on the outskirts of Hankey, in the Gamtoos River Valley, considered her birthplace. The grave is covered with pebbles, some of them with pieces of paper with the image of Baartman’s face endorsed by the South African government, and surrounded by a metal fence structure. Outside the fence, a bronze plaque embedded in a stone and placed by the Department of Arts and Culture and the South African Heritage Resources Agency mentions the spiritual, cultural, social and historical significance of the site as the final resting place of Sarah Baartman’s remains.

She became orphaned when her family was attacked in a commando raid and was subsequently taken to Cape Town as a slave. At the age of 20, in 1810, William Dunlop, a British ship’s doctor, took her to London. There she was put on display as a human novelty, due to the fascination of the Europeans with her body shape. Her inhumane treatment was exposed and a court case was brought in her defence by the African Association, an anti-slavery group in London.

When she could no longer be displayed in London, she was sold to an animal trainer in France, who also used her as if she were a circus animal. She died of a respiratory illness in Paris in 1815, after which her body was dissected by a scientist named George Cuvier, Napoleon’s surgeon-general. A body cast was made of her corpse and her body parts were put on display until 1974.

In 1994, President Nelson Mandela appealed to the French Government for the return of the remains of Sarah Baartman from the Musee de l’Homme in Paris. It was only in 2002 that the French Government finally agreed.

On 22 August 2002, the former president, Thabo Mbeki, declared the grave of Sarah Baartman a national heritage site.

Written by
Shojobi Solomon La, Astra Planet Magazine (c) 2024, All Rights Reserved.

Read the first version by Knight Fredel from Awake Afraka Magazine. Click here to read.