Saartjie Baartman

Shá Cage plays Saartjie Baartman, a 19th century woman who represented "the other" to racist and sexist Britons.



Her exhibition in London created a scandal and a benevolent society called the African Association petitioned for her release. Baartman was questioned in Dutch before a court, and stated that she was not under restraint and understood perfectly that she was guaranteed half of the profits. The conditions under which she made these statements are suspect, because it directly contradicts accounts of her exhibits made by Zachary Macaulay of the African Institution and other eye witnesses (Strother 1999). She later traveled to Paris where an animal trainer exhibited her for fifteen months. French anatomist Georges Cuvier and French naturalists visited her and she was the subject of several scientific paintings at the Jardin du Roy.
Baartman died December 29, 1815 of an inflammatory ailment. An autopsy was conducted and the findings published by French anatomist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville in 1816 and by Cuvier in the Memoires du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in 1817. Cuvier notes in his monograph that Baartman was an intelligent woman who had an excellent memory and spoke Dutch fluently. Her skeleton, preserved genitals and brain were placed on display in Paris Musée de l'Homme until 1974.

There were sporadic calls for the return of her remains beginning in the 1940s but the case became prominent only after US biologist Stephen Jay Gould published an account, The Hottentot Venus, in the 1980s. When Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa in 1994, he formally requested that France return the remains. After much legal wrangling and debates in the French National Assembly, France acceded to the request on 6 March 2002.

Whilst studying in Europe Diana Ferrus, a South African poet of Khoisan descent, wrote "A Poem for Sarah Baartman" which includes the desire "to wrench [her] away-/ away from the poking eyes..."

Baartman's remains were returned to her land of birth, the Gamtoos Valley, on 3 May 2002.

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