France passed a law in 2002 to return Sarah Baartman's remains to South Africa

Sarah Baartman was born about 1789 near the Gamtoos River in today's Eastern Cape, South Africa. On 29 October 1810 she was said to have signed a contract with the surgeon William Dunlop, though she could not read. She was taken to London and shown as an exhibit. In September 1814 she was moved to Paris and sold to an animal exhibitor named Réaux. From March 1815 naturalists led by Georges Cuvier studied her. She died in Paris on 29 December 1815. Cuvier made a plaster cast of her body, kept her skeleton, and removed her brain and genitals. The Musée de l'Homme displayed her remains until 1974 and her body cast until 1976. In 1994, at the request of Khoisan representatives, President Nelson Mandela asked President François Mitterrand to return her. Her remains belonged to a French national collection and were treated as inalienable, so a formal act was needed. Senator Nicolas About tabled a bill on 4 December 2001. The Senate passed it on 29 January 2002 and the National Assembly on 21 February 2002. Law No. 2002-323 of 6 March 2002 took her remains out of the collections of the National Museum of Natural History. They reached South Africa in May 2002. She was buried on 9 August 2002, South African Women's Day, on the hill Vergaderingskop at Hankey in the Gamtoos valley. In 2009 the government opened a design competition for a Centre of Remembrance on 80 hectares beside her grave.