November celebration... a new month...

A multi-layered complexity of the echoes of Sarah (Saartjie) Baartman

Written by Maleke Montshiwagae


[A multi-layered complexity of the echoes of Sarah (Saartjie) Baartman]

When I first had my truly conscious encounter with Sarah Baartman, an experience that further ignited my conscious desire to dig deeper into the hills of the black experience beyond the standard daily narratives, was when I attended (Ntate) Professor Mahlomaholo’ confrontational inaugural lecture held in 2009 at the North West University following his appointment as a research Professor. It was after this encounter that I was fully transformed into a newly born again black man.

The painful, violent and brutal evolution in the story of Sarah provides the black world with an opportunity to interrogate her experiences as a reflection on white patriarchy as a representation of anti-black racism, it places further responsibility upon the shoulders of the black world to deconstruct such things as feminism within the context of a black society verses the west (white) society in classical times in order to interpret its effects in the modern black community. Questions to the importance of names and memory are captured in the evolution, with the black dehumanization process being evident. Sarah Baartman appears to be an epitome of the global black experience!

[A dissected African in the name]

The initial and probably the most important or critical step to the understanding and learning about the experiences of Sarah Baartman is in noticing the absence of her native name, together with recognizing her assigned name.

Many written articles and writers mentions that Sarah was orphaned in commando raid, and that there are no records of her birth name, (Qureshi, Sadiah (June 2004). ‘’Displacing Sarah Baartman, the ‘’Venus Hottentot’’. History of Science 42 (136): 233-257. ‘’The woman... is now called Sarah Baartman. Unfortunately no record of her original name exists and she is better known by her epithet, the Hottentot Venus’’, to her contemporaries, present-day historians, and political activists’’). Another source in support of lack of records of her birth name indicates that, ‘’the author Rachel Homes who attempts to untangle her name but eventually concedes in ‘’African Queen: the real life of the Hottentot Venus,’’ that Saartjie might not even be the name she was born with, calling the –tjie diminutive suffix a ‘’racist speech act.’’ Colonialist roots and all, it was her name in life as shed lived it’’ (http://usslave.blogspot.co.za/2011/10/real-life-of-hottentot-venus.html). In addition to the absence of her original name from the records, it appears that a British colonial name of Sarah was given to her, and as if that was not enough, her Dutch settler master Pieter Willem Cezar alters the name to Saartjie, which is said to be a Dutch diminutive version of her British name. It is also said that in Cape Dutch, the use of the diminutive form commonly indicates endearment or contempt. The basic treatment of Sarah as a slave seems to support the latter, even if one was to argue for the former for the sake of a benefit of a doubt, one would quickly be reminded by the writing in ‘’Biko lives, contesting the legacies of Biko, chapter 4: Biko and the problematic of presence’’. p.100, of the unconscious identification or desire of the evil white master that would contradict his preconscious interest indicated by his Saartjie reference as supported by his practical ability to enslave her.

The assignment of a colonial name and its diminutive alteration into a settler version, brings ‘’Something Torn and New, An African Renaissance’’ by Ngugi wa Thiongo into mind and wakes me up to his remark in this great work, when he deals with Japan’s occupation of Korea in 1906 when it banned Korean names and required the colonized to take on Japanese ones when he says: ‘’But one might ask: what is a name? And continues to mention how he remembers the encounter between the unnamed man and Crusoe in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe as follows: ‘’..... I was greatly delighted with him’’ says Crusoe, ‘’and made it my business to make him speak, and understand me when I spoke, and he was the aptest scholar that ever was....’’

He further says, the education program that Crusoe sets up for the man begins with names. Crusoe does not even bother to ask the man’s name: ‘’ [A]nd first I let him know that his name should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life,... I likewise taught him to say ‘’Master’’, and then let him know that was to be my name’’. Subject and Master become the terms of their exchange. Even simple greetings- How are you, Friday? I am fine Master- express their unequal relationship. Friday’s body no longer carries any memory of previous identity to subvert the imposed identity.

One of the missing pieces in the Sarah puzzle is the name, this is puzzling given the account by Georges Cuvier in his monograph titled ‘’Memoires du Museum d’Histoire Naturelle’’ published in 1817 that, ‘’In addition to her native tongue, she spoke fluent Dutch, passable English and a smattering of French’’ and also, the fact that Cuvier notes that ‘’Sarah was an intelligent woman with an excellent memory, particularly for faces’’. One would imagine that if there were no records of her name, and given these noted qualities, then surely someone should have bothered to ask her original name and that she would have been able to recall it. Or perhaps this is a case of Crusoe meeting an unnamed man and not bothering to ask his name? Perhaps there was some sort of archetypical synchronicity between Master Crusoe and Master Pieter Willem Cezar to the effect that the ‘’education program’’ to be set up for the unnamed man and Sarah must begin with the name such that a new identity may be imposed upon them. This could probably be an explanation to the missing piece in the Sarah puzzle.

It is worth noting that in the African experience of naming, names are ‘’preservers’’ of past experiences that can aid in the storage of past events for example, and thereby be a way to remember and retell the past experiences. However, this understanding of the importance of naming seems to be universal as reflected in Crusoe’s naming of the unnamed man and his recognition that the imposed name will remind him of the day that he saved him. Therefore, the naming of Sarah reflects a memory erasure of the African experience, such that she may never remember that which is African and essentially her own essence as her memory will be preoccupied with the experiences of the Master slave exchange. From this, it is evident that the naming has in fact been the genesis of the dissecting of the African through Sarah Baartman.

Yours truly as an individual writer is clear that he would never fully re-express the personal experiences of Sarah through representation. This is partly motivated by the reading of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s distinction between what she terms ‘’Vertretung’’ and ‘’Darstellung’’ as forms of representation in which she defines the former as ‘’stepping in someone’s place… to tread in someone’s shoes’’, which is a political representation or a speaking for the desires of somebody. She defines the latter as representation as re-presentation, ‘’placing there’’. Representing is thus ‘’proxy and portrait’’ according to Spivak (http://ec2-174-129-30-145.compute-1.amazonaws.com/representation/). She recommends ‘’persistent critique’’, which yours truly believes that by having declared the fact that he could never re-express Sarah’s experiences through ‘’Vertretung’’ or otherwise, he has demonstrated self ‘’persistent critique’’. This, according to Spivak is to guard against ‘’constructing Sarah ‘’the other’’ simply as an object of knowledge and in the process leaving out the real other(Sarah) because of having gotten access into public places due to the waves of benevolence as Spivak would warn.

Also, that would be in-line with Spivak’s notion of ‘’unlearning one’s privilege’’ in which she says: ‘’what we are asking is that the holders of the hegemonic discourse, which my imagined educational status could qualify me as and therefore be seen as occupying a contradictory position, should de-hegemonize their position and themselves learn how to occupy the subject position of the other’’ which I can only learn through increase in knowledge regarding that position.
Therefore the reference I make that ‘’the beginning of the dissection of the African through Sarah’’, is really meant to express the collective that Sarah represents and is not suggestive of my ‘’Vertretung’’ understanding of her position because as I have mentioned, I can only learn about that position through increased knowledge alone.


[Sarah in the hands of Patriarchy manifesting as anti-black racism]

Ngugi wa Thiongo writes that, ‘’the road to colonial hell, at least for the colonized, has always been paved with good intentions’’. Sarah’s journey from the Gamtoos River Valley to England and France is no different in terms of the intentions upon which it was paved. It is reported that the British ship’s doctor Willem Dunlop promised her monetary rewards as he persuaded her to travel with him to England, this money was to be derived from the displaying of Sarah as a ‘’Freak’’ and a ‘’scientific curiosity’’

It is important to note that the drivers of the vehicle of darkness that carried Sarah through her brutal journey of anti-black violence are indeed a series of white men! Many writers and scholars who are located within a Eurocentric mind frame and thought process tends to distinguish between patriarchy and anti-black racism as separate occurrences. It is my strong view that Sarah Baartman’s suffering presents a strong and clear black lens through which one can see that patriarchy manifests itself as anti-black racism rather than being separate from it. To this end, the anti-black pre-conditions and attitudes for the road leading to Sarah’s journey and her eventual physical dissection by George Cuvier after her death are contained within the racist ideological configuration of the west (Europe) as discharged through patriarchy.

To clarify this important point, Cheik Anta Diop comes to our rescue in his book titled ‘’The Cultural Unity of Black Africa’’ in which he identifies what he terms double cradle of two geographical zones of North (Europe) and South (Africa as an example). Within these two cradles, he asserts that matriarchy originated in the agricultural South, while patriarchy originated in the North cradle being nomadic as influenced by their respective environments. Cheik notes that in the nomadic life, which was reduced to a series of perpetual migrations, the economic role of a woman was reduced to a strict minimum. She was only a burden that the man dragged behind him and that outside her function of child-bearing, her role in nomadic society is nil. Having smaller economic value, it is she who must leave her clan to join that of her husband, contrary to the matriarchal custom which demands the opposite. It is interesting that a woman must even compensate for her economic inferiority by the dowry she brings to her husband.

Contrary to this patriarchal character of the North, the woman in the South cradle contributed substantially to the economic life of the agricultural society. She even becomes one of the stabilizing elements in her capacity as mistress of the house and keeper of food, it also seems that she even played an important role in the discovery of agriculture and in plant selection while the man devoted himself to the hunt. In these primitive ages when the security of the group was the primary concern, the respect enjoyed by either of the sexes was connected with its contribution to this collective security. In an agricultural regime, it can thus be expected that the woman receives a dowry instead of bringing one to her husband as happens in nomadic life. The significance of the dowry must be explained thus: it is compensation or a guarantee provided by the less economically favored sex.

This work by Cheik, which he demonstrates in detail in his book, reveals the subtle and artificially constructed false notions of universal matriarchy used to justify a transition from an imagined universal matriarchy to patriarchy for purposes of serving a racist agenda. These revelations are seen in the two examples of authors whom Cheik critiques their theories in which a universal matriarchy past of mankind is constructed out of nowhere with no proof.

The two authors are Morgan and J.J Bachofes, but for the purpose of this work I will only take the case of J.J Bachofes to see how he constructs a racist notion of matriarchy from a Greek ideological configuration. As Cheik writes, Bachofes considers that mankind in its earliest state underwent a period of barbarism and sexual promiscuity, so that decent could only be reckoned through the female line. This is followed by a second stage called gynaecocracy which is characterized by marriage and the supremacy of the woman. The final stage is the third one distinguished from the other by a new form of marriage under the domination of the male, by masculine imperialism which is the reign of patriarchy considered superior to matriarchy in that it represents light, reason and delicacy for example. Matriarchy was linked with the cave-like depths of the earth, to the night, to the moon, to material things and passive femininity in opposition to masculine activity.

Cheik writes that Bachofes derives his argument from the Oresteia of Aeschylus (the Greek philosopher) in which the Greeks in heroic ages were ruled by gynaecocracy which deteriorated over time into patriarchy due to changing circumstances. In the detailed work that Cheik carried out regarding the North and South cradles by even studying the Romans and the Greeks, he has the following to say that: ‘’it has never been possible to determine the existence of a historical period during which the Greeks and the Romans might have lived under matriarchy’’, the Oresteia was therefore a way that Aeschylus tried to deal with the issue of law and justice as he believed that drama could be used to that effect, so Bachofes saw this as a struggle between matriarchy and patriarchy and for his racist intent decided to take that as indication of universal human transition from an inferior to a superior state.

Cheik’s analysis is of crucial importance because Bachofes and Morgan considered the sexual promiscuity and barbarism as identifiable with the South cradle society (Africa for example) which Cheik has demonstrated to be matriarchal from antiquity. The fact that matriarchy is not a general stage in human evolution, with its clear absence from the North cradle (European society), shows how the evil racists are able and capable to construct the presence of anything in their own world to pursue their anti-black agenda and to use these constructions to justify their evil deeds against black people.

Had we not had the pro-black scholars of Cheik’s caliber, it would be easy to accept these human universality and say: ‘’now that matriarchy is universal across humanity, we thank Europe’s anti-black patriarchy transition as it delivered us from the barbaric matriarchy’’, and matriarchy which was never part of Europe as demonstrated would have been the South people. These European racist-patriarchal attitudes are reflected in how Willem Dunlop is willing to display Sarah as a ‘’freak’’ and a ‘’scientific curiosity’’, the scientific curiosity is further carried out by Georges Cuvier when even after Sarah’s death he dissected her body in order to study her brain, organs, genitalia and buttocks. The fact that Sarah the ‘’the savage woman’’ was seen as distinct from the ‘’civilized female ’’ of Europe, reflects and supports the fact that indeed patriarchy as a superior state as per Bachofes, is an anti-black state that suppresses the ‘’barbaric uncivilized matriarchal’’ Africans.

Sarah’s pain and suffering as a black woman in the hands of white patriarchal men cannot be analysed from a feminist perspective because as I have shown here, Sarah suffered because she was an African and not necessarily because she was a woman. This can further be supported by Julien-Joseph Virey in his essay titled ‘’Dictionnaire des sciences medicates’’ (Dictionary of medical studies) in which he identifies Sarah’s sexual organs as more developed and distinct in comparison to white female organs which reflects sexual primitivism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saartjie_Baartman), this position is as similarly theorized by Bachofes in his consideration of how patriarchy transitioned from matriarchy located in sexual promiscuity of the South cradle.
The important character to note about the South cradle is that matriarchy in the South cradle was not ‘’pure’’ and straight as constructed by the west, Cheik demonstrates that it was characterized by a complementary role between man and woman towards a ‘’collective security’’, therefore the black feminist would get lost because for them, they will look back and search for a ‘’world’’ governed by women which they will never find.


In conclusion,the contained collective suffering of Africans is echoed from a multi-layered complexity of the suffering of Sarah Baartman as reflected in her name and fate at the hands of patriarchal white men. Her dissection is a reflection of the dissecting of the collective African from all dimensions. Sarah is the epitome of the global black experience.

awakening while eating

Written by Maleke Montshiwagae

the concept of "at least I'm doing something" is often quite reactionary. .. the reactionary charity force often use it to negatively alter the emotions of those committed to "fundamental" work regarding the black condition. ... . labels such as armchair critics are attached to "fundamental workers" to discredit their contribution given their often inconvenient and uncomfortable questions

while one acknowledges the importance and realities of the "now hunger " question within the black grammar of suffering, one also has to be cautious of the reactionary nature of charity when not coupled with a reawakening program . ..

Firoze Manji in an article under the ''thinking Africa'' Newsletter is quoted as saying: " In the struggle for emancipation, private organizations such as NGOs role has to be focused on acts of solidarity, not acts of charity. Their role is to amplify the voices of the oppressed, not to speak on their behalf. The name of the game is emancipation- I think that has to be the basis upon which everything else is done"....

he continues to define two forms of freedom, namely emancipatory, in which individuals and communities push boundaries and challenge those who delimit their freedom, and licensed freedom, in which the parameters are set and constrained by others rather than those who seek their own freedom!..

therefore, if "doing something" takes a white liberal form of feeling sorry for black people and therefore coming over to "help" by feeding them soup etc without any emancipatory agenda that would assist in dismantling the black condition, then that approach is extremely reactionary and cannot be supported from a "fundamental work" point of view. I would say that it speaks rather to a licensed freedom in which the terms of engagement are predetermined by the "helper".

if there's any charity black people could do with, is the charity of the collapse of capital relations through which blacks will be guaranteed the human status simply because the current capital relations are based on a dehumanized black reality. for example, the foundations of USA's Anglo-Saxon racist capitalism rests upon the black men as the "other" , therefore "doing something " must always be coupled with a burning desire to emancipate the black from being the "other" towards being black the human. .... hence the talk of a collapse in capital relations as we know it.......

let's do something yes! . . a sustainable emancipation. ...

Mosia Mahlomaholo