competition for the design of the Sarah Baartman Centre of Remembrance
9 March 2009
Honourable Premier
Your worship the Executive Mayor of Kouga
Your Worship the Mayor
Khoekhoe and San Traditional and Civic leadership here present
Ministers
Members of the Executive Council
Members of Parliament
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Running like a red thread through the historical experience of the Khoekhoe
and the San people, since the advent of colonialism in Southern Africa, is a
narrative of dispossession, racial oppression and even genocide.
Our democratic Constitution guarantees each citizen of South Africa
fundamental human rights under the Bill of Rights. Our Bill of Rights is based
on the culture of human rights as it has evolved both before and after the 20th
century, to accord each individual protection against any form of
discrimination under the law.
Government policy since 1994 and the laws this government has passed
provided further protections to the individual's economic, social, political
and cultural rights. These rights are entrenched and their application is
monitored and enforced through statutory bodies such as the Human Rights
Commission and the Gender Commission. Our government also recognized that it
had a duty to make manifest these protections and to give substance to the
rights contained in the Bill of rights.
This is why the government is developing the Sarah Baartman Centre of
Remembrance and the KhoiSan Heritage Route as commemorative markers which will
stand as reminders both of the violation of the rights of the Khoekoe and San
people, their dispossession under colonialism and apartheid, but also to
underscore the contribution the Khoekhoe and San have made to the struggle for
freedom and democracy, while also preserving for transmission to future
generations the indigenous knowledge of these communities and the enduring
aspects of their culture.
There have been a number of attempts to have the remains of Sarah Baartman
returned to South Africa since the 1940s. After the eminent American biologist,
Stephen Jay Gould, came across her remains in a store room at a Paris Museum
and he published an account of her in the 1980's, the urgency of repatriating
her remains took on a new dimension. In 1994, President Nelson Mandela launched
an international campaign requesting the French National Assembly to have her
remains returned to the land of her birth for a proper and dignified burial.
The French National Assembly finally took that decision.
After much debate and public consultation, an appropriate place of burial
was found. It is this small koppie, called vergaderingskop. Her remains arrived
on South African soil on 3 May 2002, after 187 years, she was finally home. The
casket was flown to Cape Town and on Sunday, 4 August a Khoekhoe cleansing
ritual and dressing ceremony took place in preparation for her burial. The
remains of Sarah Baartman were finally laid to rest on 9th August 2002, South
African Women's Day and also International Day for Indigenous Peoples.
Sarah Baartman has come to be regarded as an international icon of the
marginalised indigenous peoples. Her name is invoked around every struggle for
human rights and racial equality. This gravesite represents the re-affirmation
of the dignity of women, specifically the women of formerly colonised and
oppressed peoples.
It is therefore most appropriate that the democratic government has
acknowledged not only the tribulations and trials of Sarah Baartman, but
through our recognition of her, also to affirm the role that the Khoekhoe
people played in the struggle against imperial and colonial domination in South
Africa.
A solemn tree-planting ceremony heralds the construction of a permanent
structure to commemorate the life of Sarah Baartman and to establish a
repository where the heritage, the history and the culture of the Khoekhoe and
San people can be preserved, uncovered through rigorous scholarly research and
can be fed back into the broader South African community.
Programme Director,
Ladies and gentlemen,
The Sarah Baartman centre will be developed on 80 hectares of land adjacent
to her gravesite. This land located south and southwest of the Baviaanskloof
Mega-Reserve was graciously donated by the Kouga Municipality and I want to use
this opportunity to express our profound thanks to the municipality for their
generosity.
It will be a multi-purpose space of national significance, intended for use
by national, provincial and local communities. The centre will be the gateway
into the Baviaanskloof Heritage Route and form part of the larger Integrated
Development Plan to promote Kouga as a tourism destination. The integrated
development planning process will ensure that local government planning is
geared towards economic development and specifically, toward local economic
development.
The development of the infrastructure for the establishment of the heritage
route and the centre, will feed directly into the Local Economic Development
projects of the Kouga Municipality, which include the development of tourism
nodes, poverty alleviation through Extended Public Works Programme, and rural
development.
We have invited the South African architectural community to participate in
what promises to be an exciting competition to develop and design the Sarah
Baartman Centre of Remembrance. The brief for the architectural competition was
developed in conjunction with the Reference Group of the Sarah Baartman
Project, the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, and it has gone through a
process of consultation with Khoekhoe and San community members, and the three
tiers of government.
The centre will include a large multi-purpose space, a library, exhibition
spaces, including living exhibition spaces, and an indigenous plants garden and
nursery. The latter could serve as a very useful research facility as well to
uncover the hidden aspects of Khoekhoe indigenous knowledge, while classifying
cataloguing and creating a modern data base and audit of cures, medicinal
plants and other indigenous species.
The architectural brief is based on the doctrines of memory, healing, and
hope:
* Memory: to affirm the personhood and the life of Sarah Baartman and to
develop a space as a repository for the cultural-heritage of the KhoiSan.
* Healing: given the past injustices against Sarah Baartman, the Khoekhoe and
San peoples, to affirm the culture of human rights.
* Hope: to affirm the cultural heritage of the Khoekhoe and San people, and
expressing the hope for it renewal, through transmission to these to younger
generations and rigourous research to preserve those aspects which have
enduring value.
It now gives me great pleasure to formally and officially declare the
competition for the design of the Sarah Baartman Centre of Remembrance
open.
The Sarah Baartman Centre of Remembrance will be linked to the development
of the KhoiSan Heritage Route, which shall be a nation-wide project of
significant KhoiSan heritage sites. Sites under consideration include the Kat
River valley settlement, which rose in rebellion against British colonialism in
1850; Adam Kok's grave in Griqualand, the graves at Kinderlê, where 32 Khoi
children were killed in 1804, Wonderwerk cave; Phillipolis; and Ratelgat, owned
by the Griqua Ratelgat Development Trust, the sites of Griqua churches and
other institutions in the eastern Cape, northern Cape and the western Cape; as
well battle sites associated with the War of 1799 to 1803.
This list is not exhaustive, and was developed during consultative meetings
with communities since 2003. This underlines the need to enter into further
discussions and a continuing dialogue with the Khoekhoe and San communities, as
well as the rest of society.
The retelling of and the promotion of the rich history of the KhoiSan of
Southern Africa has equally been fraught with difficulties, and is long
overdue. We as a society need to educate ourselves about this, the first South
African nation, to reproduce the best examples of their art work, music and
dances, and to re-learn virtually everything we were taught about these
people.
Permit me, in closing, to use the words of Speelman Kieviet spoken during
the last year's 1799 to 1803 war:
"Time is important. It is a national cause, and can you as a nation remain
inactive? Arise courageously and work for your motherland and freedom."
Time is indeed important and the promotion of the KhoiSan heritage and
commemoration of the KhoiSan heroes, leaders and people are a national cause.
The development of the Khoisan Heritage Route, along which will be the Sarah
Baartman gravesite, the Sarah Baartman Centre of Remembrance, as well as other
physical markings elated to the history and heritage of the KhoiSan.
Time is important, and we shall need it to do justice to this project.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Arts and Culture
9 March 2009
