Heritage Day focus on life of Baartman

THE life of Sarah Baartman will be the main focus of Heritage Day celebrations in the area named after her.

The celebrations, led by the Sarah Baartman District Municipality, will take place in Hankey and will engage and educate people about Baartman’s life.

Sarah Baartman District Municipality speaker Deon de Vos said the celebrations on September 24 would be a small way of giving recognition to Baartman’s life and would publicly embrace the name of the municipality, which was previously Cacadu.

“No cost will ever repay the pain she [Baartman] went through,” De Vos said.

“We also want the Khoisan community to feel embraced in the country.”

Kouga Municipality’s director of local economic development, tourism and creative industries, Carleen Arends, said the event was imperative after Baartman’s graveyard was vandalised recently.

“The graveyard, which is [situated] in the Sarah Baartman Centre of Remembrance in the area, now has 24-hour security.

“We are waiting for permission from the South African Heritage Resources Agency to build a new graveyard,” Arends said.

Baartman was born in Hankey in 1789 and worked as a slave in Cape Town, where she was discovered by a British ship’s doctor, William Dunlop.

Dunlop persuaded her to travel with him to England, where she was captured as a slave and became the object of racism and exploitation.

She was forced to publicly display her unusual physical features and was subsequently displayed as a scientific curiosity.

Her physical characteristics, while not unusual for Khoisan women, were larger than normal to Europeans.

“The Khoisan community and their chief will also hold a ceremony to cleanse the graveyard,” Arends said.

The heritage celebrations will include a social dialogue and cultural festivities at the Sarah Baartman Centre of Remembrance, and sport events at Hankey Secondary school.

The Khoisan community will showcase their diverse food delicacies, while the sporting activities will include African nationals to spread an anti-xenophobia message.

De Vos said the municipality had engaged with the community and there had been overwhelming support for its name change.