Perhaps the most well-known person to hail from the Gamtoos Valley, Khoikhoi woman Sarah Baartman was stripped of her dignity when she was paraded in Europe in the 1800s as a freak show attraction.
Her body, normal among other Khoi women at the time and what would be considered voluptuous and curvy in modern times, was a spectacle to Europeans who would pay to see her.
Born in the late 1700s, Sarah grew up in the Hankey area, the same farming community where her remains, which had also been on display at a Paris museum until the 1970s, were finally returned home in 2002 after a lengthy repatriation process.
It was a momentous occasion: SA's daughter, said to be one of the first black women subjected to human sexual trafficking, was finally back where she belonged after almost 200 years.
A service was held and Sarah's remains were buried in a modest grave on a hill overlooking the Gamtoos Valley at the entrance to Hankey.
Over the years since, there have been plans to memorialise Sarah with the establishment of the Sarah Baartman Centre of Remembrance in the farming town.
But the world heritage legacy project initially launched in August 2014 at a cost of R164m and meant to be completed in 30 months has stalled several times, hampered by embarrassing delays, poor planning, contractual disputes and cost overruns.
This week, almost six years past its completion date and two contractors later, sport, recreation, arts and culture minister Nathi Mthethwa visited Hankey — and not for the first time — telling those at a packed Vusumzi Hall that law enforcement agencies had since been approached to investigate officials who might have been involved in derailing the project.
This intervention is long overdue.
It is time to give Sarah the dignity she deserved but was denied in life.
She is our history, she is our heritage.
We need to do better by her than those who took her from her country of birth only to display her — in life and in death — as something to be gawked at and mocked.
Let us not wait another 200 years before Sarah is fittingly honoured.
HeraldLIVE
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.