I take a very interesting course that is called "The Empires of the Modern World" and recently we had touched on the life and times of Sarah "Saartjie" Baartman. This was a woman of Khoi-San descent who was removed from South Africa and paraded around Europe by Europeans for economic gains. Baartman was seen as some sort of freak show because of her unusually large (by European standards) buttocks. She was forced to expose her genitalia and have all of these sexual connotations imposed on her. Sarah's experiences and humiliation were recognised by former president, Thabo Mbeki, to be a holistically South African experience and that her story is a South African one which we can all relate to. It is no secret that Apartheid and events leading to it have devastated our nation in ways that cannot possibly be expressed by me alone. Sarah Baartman must b remembered as a true representation of the South African experience. Sarah Baartman's remains were returned to South Africa 187 years after she was taken away and she was buried in 2002 near her place o birth in the Eastern Cape. Her grave has been declared a national heritage site.
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