After more than a decade of delays, work is again underway on the long-awaited Sarah Baartman Centre of Remembrance in Hankey, Eastern Cape – a project local tourism officials say could become an important anchor for cultural tourism in the Kouga region.
The project was handed over to a new contractor by Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson on July 5. A meeting between Khoi leaders and government officials on August 25 addressed the future of Sarah Baartman’s nearby grave site.
The Department of Sport, Arts and Culture is reportedly targeting completion of the centre by the end of October 2027 with a view to opening it to the public in November next year.
Heidi Halgryn, Tourism, Marketing and Information Officer at Kouga Local Municipality, said the unfinished centre has made it difficult to build a tourism offering around the area’s Khoi-San heritage.
“The incomplete centre puts us on the back foot in promoting our region’s culture and heritage. This would be the only memorial or museum honouring Khoi-San heritage of its kind in the whole world. It’s incredibly important not only for the Eastern Cape but for South Africa.”
She said the municipality already faces limited resources for destination marketing, making a strong visitor attraction particularly important.
“The Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency is not able to assist with destination marketing because it simply doesn’t have the budget. The burden of marketing basically falls on the local municipality. But, even if it did have the budget, how do you showcase the district without the centre? We’ve got a small museum but it doesn’t give people the actual feel and walkthrough of what the Sarah Baartman Museum is supposed to be giving.”
More than a decade in the making
Sarah (“Sara”) Baartman was a Khoikhoi woman born around 1789, trafficked from her home in Gamtoos Valley and exhibited as a human spectacle in Europe. After dying in Paris, her body was exhibited in the Musée de l’Homme. Her remains were returned to South Africa in 2002 and she was buried in Hankey, Eastern Cape.
Plans to develop a memorial site to honour her memory and celebrate the heritage of the Khoi-San and “coloured” communities were then set in motion. A R164 million tender was awarded in April 2014 to build the Sarah Baartman Centre of Remembrance in Hankey near her grave site in Vergaderingskop.
More than a decade later, however, the centre remains unfinished after a succession of contractors and delays. The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure previously included it on a list of problematic government projects requiring intervention.
Halgryn said the repeated stoppages also affected work already completed at the site.
“The centre has always been neglected. Any progress made by a previous contractor is undone when they close down the site. A new contractor has to basically start rebuilding and taxpayers’ money that is being poured into it keeps doubling.”
She said, since joining the municipality as tourism officer in 2023, she has seen little progress in the project.
Grave site plans reconsidered
The renewed construction push comes alongside discussions about how Baartman’s grave site should be treated.
At the August 25 meeting, Khoi leaders and government representatives agreed that the grave should retain the character of a natural Khoi burial site rather than being developed as a conventional monument.
According to Halgryn, this is expected to require changes to the design of the burial site to reflect Khoi ancestral burial traditions.
