Sold as a slave, exhibited as a freak, Sarah finds dignity after 200 years

With a solemn burial ceremony in a small rural town yesterday, South Africa sought to restore dignity to an indigenous woman who had been displayed like a circus freak in Europe two centuries ago.

Saartjie Baartman, also known as Sarah, died a penniless prostitute and had her skeleton and bottled organs stored in a museum in France before the South African government negotiated their return earlier this year.

Baartman became a symbol of the humiliation and subjugation experienced by both the indigenous Khoisan and blacks under colonialism and then apartheid. Thousands attended her funeral in the town of Hankey, about 470 miles east of Cape Town, where she was born in 1789.

"The story of Sarah Baartman is the story of the African people," President Thabo Mbeki said at the ceremony which coincided with national Women's Day. "It is the story of the loss of our ancient freedom ... it is the story of our reduction to the state of objects who could be owned, used and discarded by others."

Speakers praised the attempt to restore dignity to a woman who had been horribly mistreated in both life and death. Willa Boezak, an indigenous rights activist, said: "I hear the cry of Sarah Baartman. Her soul cries out with relief that at last the pain and humiliation are gone."

Before Baartman's burial, herbs were set on fire as part of a traditional ceremony to purify her remains. Then government officials and traditional Khoisan leaders watched as her coffin, decorated by two aloe wreaths, was lowered into the ground while a choir sang softly.

Baartman, a member of the Griqua tribe, was sold in 1810 to a British surgeon who exhibited her in London in a cage. She was then sold to an animal trainer and exhibited naked in Paris, her large buttocks and sexual organs making her the subject of crude fascination and earning her the nickname "Hottentot Venus". After her death in 1816, a famous surgeon made a cast of her body, dissected her and conserved her brain and genitalia in formaldehyde. The painted plaster cast of her body was displayed in the Musee de l'Homme, Paris, until 1974 when it was stashed in a backroom with her remains.

President Mbeki said Baartman was exploited by European scientists to prove their racist theories. The barbarian was not Baartman, "but those who treated her with barbaric brutality", he added.

Willa Boezak and others said South Africa must now tackle the problems of abuse of women and children and discrimination against the Khoisan – the race of hunter-gatherers commonly known as bushmen – who remainone of the poorest communities in the region.

President Mbekiexhorted his people to work together to build a non-racial society and a land of sexual equality. "When that is done, then it will be possible to say that Sarah Baartman has truly come home," he said.