Sarah Baartman's 200-year journey back home

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2024

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In August 2002, the remains of an indigenous South African woman called Sarah Baartman were returned to South Africa after almost 200 years away. Sarah died in Paris in 1815 after being forced to perform in European 'freak shows' where people considered to be biological rarities were paraded for entertainment. She had been subjected to racist and degrading treatment and her remains were exhibited at a French museum until 1976.

When Nelson Mandela became the president of South Africa in 1994, he requested that Sarah's remains be returned to her homeland. However, by 1998 that had not happened. Poet Diana Ferrus decided to write about Sarah’s limbo. Her poem became so popular that it was noticed by politicians in France. Diana shares her memories of that time with Matt Pintus.

This programme contains discriminatory language.

(Photo: Sarah Baartman likeness at French museum. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
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0:37.0	Hello you're listening to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me
0:45.6	Matt Pintus in 1815 an indigenous South African woman called Sarah Bartman died died after years performing in a European freak show.
0:56.2	She'd been subjected to racist and degrading treatment, descriptions of which you will hear.
1:02.1	Nearly two centuries past before her body was finally brought back to South Africa in 2002.
1:08.0	One woman's poem helped bring Sarah's body home. This is her story. It's 1998 in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands.
1:32.0	The city is famous for its university and one of its students is 35 year old South African, Diana Ferris. I was standing in my room one evening and I was missing my mother who died the previous year
1:40.0	and I was thinking about Sarah. I was looking out at the stars and I said if I was in my country I would be able to touch the stars.
1:50.0	And I said to myself if I miss my mother this much, how much more did she miss her mother?
1:57.0	Sarah is Sarah Bartman, the South African indigenous woman who has taken to Europe to perform in freak shows where people
2:04.6	considered to be biological rarities were paraded for entertainment.
2:09.4	Diana has been reading about Sarah in class and now she can't get her story out of her head.
2:15.2	Just like Sarah, Diana is of coy and descent.
2:18.7	It was as if I heard a voice shouting, I want to go home, I want to go home I want to go home and I immediately told
2:26.6	myself that that is sara and crying tears streaming down my cheeks I went to my
2:32.2	desk and I wrote that first line, I've come to take you
2:37.6	home. And I finished the whole poem there that soothed the pain that I had and about that first line I've come to take your home.
	...

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