Muthoni Likimani

Brief Summary Muthoni Likimani’s latest book, My Blood Not for Sale, is a blistering indictment of the scourge of human trafficking in modern times. It evokes feelings of horror at the various manifestations of modern slavery, which essentially re-enacts the heart-wrenching ordeal that Sarah Baarman underwent in the 19th century. The story of the Southern African woman Sarah Baartman, exported to Europe for public display, is one of the most horrendous instances of human trafficking. The sad story typifies the perpetual victimhood of people of African descent from antiquity to modernity. Sarah Baartman, of Khoikhoi or Hottentot origin, was lured with false promises of prosperity and plucked from her ancestral home in South Africa in 1810 and shipped to England, where she was put on display in freak shows. Why? Her physical features piqued the European gaze and earned her the tag Hottentont Venus, because in the European imagination, she was very unlike the women of the civilized Western world. She was displayed on stage in a cage in shows that earned her European captors a colossal amount of money. She was a slave. All efforts to have her released from the hands of her inhuman and inhumane captors fell flat. She would later be moved to France, where she was made an object of medical and scientific research to satiate a curious European fascination with African female sexuality. But the Hottentot Venus remained a slave in life and death as well. Upon her death, her genitalia, skeleton and brain were put on display in a museum.