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"Saartjie (Sara) Baartman was one of the first black women known to be subjugated to human sexual trafficking. She was derisively named the “Hottentot Venus” by Europeans as her body would be publicly examined and exposed inhumanly throughout the duration of her young life.  Moreover. her experience reinforced the already existing and extremely negative sexual fascination with African women bodies by the people of Europe.

Sara Baartman was born in 1789 at the Gamtoos River, now known as the Eastern Cape in South Africa. Baartman and her family were members of the Gonaquasub group of the Khoikhoi. Baartman grew up on a colonial farm where she and her family most likely worked as servants. Her mother died when she was aged two and her father, who was a cattle driver, died when she was still a young girl.

By her teenage years Baartman married a Khoikhoi man who was a drummer. They had a child together who died shortly after birth. When Baartman was sixteen, her husband was murdered by Dutch colonists. Soon after, she was sold into slavery to a trader named Pieter Willem Cezar, who took her to Cape Town where she became a domestic slave to his brother, Hendrik. On October 29, 1810, although she could not read, 21-year-old Baartman supposedly signed a contract with William Dunlop, a physician, who was a friend of the Cezar brothers.

This contract required her to travel with the Cezar brothers and Dunlop to England and Ireland where she would work as a domestic servant since technically slavery had been abolished in Great Britain. Additionally, she would be exhibited for entertainment purposes. Baartman would receive a portion of earnings from her exhibitions and would be allowed to return to South Africa after five years. However, the contract was false on all details and her enslavement continued for the remainder of her life."

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