The Sarah Baartman District Municipality (Xhosa: uMasipala weSithili sase Sarah Baartman; Afrikaans: Sarah Baartman-distriksmunisipaliteit), formerly the Cacadu District Municipality, is situated in the western part of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, covering an area of 58,242 square kilometres. The area of the district municipality includes seven local municipalities. The seat is the city of Gqeberha, although Gqeberha is not itself in the district (it is in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality). As of 2011, the languages most spoken among the 388,201 inhabitants were Xhosa and Afrikaans. The district code is DC10.

The municipality is a multi-ethnic administration, formed by the African National Congress government through the merging of the predominantly Afrikaans-speaking western part of the Eastern Cape, together with Xhosa areas near the Fish River, and the English district of Albany (with its own distinctive local culture, dating back to the 1820 settlers).

The name Cacadu is regarded by the Xhosa as covering the entire area of the district municipality, but in fact it is taken from a river that runs entirely in Gqeberha. Cacadu, meaning "bulrush water", is the Xhosa form of the Khoekhoe name of the river. The Dutch name is a translation: Papenkuils (in Afrikaans a bulrush is called a papkuil). The river rises in the Parsons Vlei and runs to the sea close to the Gqeberha industrial suburb of Deal Party.

In 2015, the municipality was renamed for Saartjie "Sarah" Baartman (1789–1815), a Khoekhoe woman who was taken to London to perform at freak shows and after her death her remains were exhibited until 1974. The renaming is part of an effort to redress marginalisation of the Khoekhoe people.^[3]

The Executive Mayor of Sarah Baartman District Municipality is Khunjuzwa Eunice Kekana, and the Municipal Manager is Ted Pillay.

The Sarah Baartman district covers an area of 58,243 square kilometres (22,488 sq mi) in the southwestern part of the Eastern Cape province. It extends to the Great Fish River in the east and the Sneeuberge in the north. The metropolitan area around Gqeberha is excluded from the district, being in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality.

The southwestern part of the district (west of Gqeberha) is marked by several ranges of mountains that run parallel to the sea, including the Baviaanskloof mountains, the Kouga mountains and the Tsitsikamma mountains. In the southeastern part (east of Port Elizabeth) is the Albany region around the city of Grahamstown. The northern interior of the district is the southeastern end of the Karoo.

To the west the district borders on the Garden Route and Central Karoo districts of the Western Cape; to the north it borders on the Pixley ka Seme district of the Northern Cape; and to the east it borders on the Chris Hani and Amathole districts of the Eastern Cape.

Sarah Baartman district is divided into nine local municipalities, as below:

After the municipal elections on 3 August 2016, the Camdeboo, Ikwezi and Baviaans municipalities were merged to form the new Dr Beyers Naudé Local Municipality, with its head offices in Graaff-Reinet. This merger resulted in there being seven local municipalities within the Sarah Baartman District.

The following statistics are from the 2001 census.