Looted heritage must be returned
• While some artefacts are being repatriated, there are sticking points and too often stolen treasures have to be borrowed by institutions on the continent
We are demanding the return of Africa’s heritage held captive in British, European and US museums, writes acclaimed author Zakes Mda.
We are demanding the return of Africa ’ s heritage held captive in British, European and US museums.
The reclamation of African heritage from archival collections in the West is fraught with problems. The looting of objects — including human remains — from the cultures of the conquered people flourished in the 19th century. There was a booming trade of sacred objects taken from temples to the West where today they form valuable collections in museums. This coincided with the development of new disciplines such as anthropology and archaeology.
One major problem encountered by our campaign for the return of our heritage is that it can only be achieved with the co-operation of African governments, most of which are reluctant to upset the apple cart since they depend on aid from these former colonial or current neocolonial masters.
For decades Ethiopians have been fighting for the return of the hair of their emperor, Tewodros II, which was taken as a souvenir by British soldiers after he took his life following Ethiopia’s defeat at the Battle of Magdala in 1868. The British raid, led by Sir Robert Napier, did not only capture the man’s locks but hundreds of illuminated manuscripts and other artefacts, including gold crowns. It took 15 elephants and 200 mules to transport the loot.
A month ago, the National Army Museum in London finally agreed to return the hair, thanks to negotiations by the new government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. But the British are holding on to the rest of the loot. The Victoria and Albert Museum had made a grand offer to lend some of these items to Ethiopia for a limited period. But Ahmed declined, as that would legitimise Britain’s possession.
The cultural haemorrhaging continued with the pillage of Benin in 1897 when a British expedition led by James R Phillips marched into the city as the king was performing an
important ritual that did not allow him to meet strangers. Despite being informed of this, Phillips forced his way and some of his men were killed by the king’s aides. The British invaded the royal palace, looting works of gold, bronze, wood and ivory, and reduced the palace to ashes. Thousands of works were removed to London as spoils of war. They are still there and are now part of British patrimony.
In 1977, Nigeria held the biggest arts festival yet for Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. Known as Festac, it brought together hundreds of artists from all over the world. Festac’s symbol was the Benin ivory mask, a portrayal of Queen Idia of the 16th-century Benin Empire — one of the masks stolen in the British raid of 1879. Nigeria wanted to borrow the mask from the British Museum — yes, borrow what was stolen from them.
They were asked to pay insurance of £2m. After raising this amount, they were told they could not have the mask because it was too delicate to entrust to Nigerians. The great symbol of Festac remained in London. Today it is still there, and its sister piece is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Over the years the Nigerian government has spent millions of dollars at auctions buying back random pieces of Benin art. But of the more than 4,000 pieces looted in Benin, writes scholar Shyllon Folarin, it has only managed to purchase and repatriate about 100.
Such looting is not unique to 19th-century Nigeria and Ethiopia. Artworks, manuscripts and relics from the following civilisations, among others, are not in Africa but in the collections of the Western world: the Aksumite Kingdom in Eritrea and Ethiopia dating as far back as 5000 to 2000 BCE, distinguishing itself with its unique architecture and its written language called Ge‘ez; the Empire of Ghana, and its incarnations as Silla and Dierra, covering parts of what is today Mali and some of its neighbouring countries, flourishing between the 7th and 13th centuries CE; the Mali Empire, which followed Ghana almost in the same region but extending right to the western coast from 1230 to 1600 CE; the Nubian Dynasty and the Kushite Empire from 744 BCE to 656 BCE, located in presentday Sudan and headquartered in Napata, on the west bank of the Nile, at the site of modern Karima.
SA’s heritage at its ancient civilisation sites was only saved from British larceny by the fact that its colonisation for the latter part of its history was internal by a settler group. An example here is the heritage of Mapungubwe, whose artefacts of gold, iron, glass beads and pottery were discovered on a farm called Greefswald on Mapungubwe hill by a black man called Mowena in December 31 1932.
He is only known as Mowena, no surname, no picture of him anywhere. He led an Afrikaner farmer and gold prospector, ESJ van Graan, to this find, who contacted the head of history at the University of Pretoria, Prof Leo Fouché. These gentlemen, without Mowena, became the discoverers of Mapungubwe. The preapartheid government bought Greefswald farm and further excavations were made. The University of Pretoria became the custodian of the heritage of Mapungubwe.
There was initial excitement about this discovery, but soon the government tried to keep it secret because it proved the existence of an African civilisation in SA around 1000 CE to 1300 CE, centuries before white people came. It disproved the assertion that the subregion was unoccupied except for bands of hunter-gatherers.
Mapungubwe was a very embarrassing find for the white rulers of SA, as was another discovery of a preMapungubwe civilisation called Bambandyanalo — known as K2 by archeologists, a few kilometres south of Mapungubwe. More such settlements are being discovered in the region.
Some Western scholars attributed Mapungubwe to some foreign ancient civilisation, for instance the Phoenicians. Braver pseudoscientists attributed Mapungubwe, as well as the related civilisation of Zimbabwe, to extraterrestrial intelligence, aliens from outer space, since it resembled nothing seen elsewhere on Earth. According to them, no African could construct such stone structures, mine gold and create such artefacts.
Yet the Vhangona people, today a clan of the VhaVenda but those days a nation, have always had a very rich oral tradition about the Kingdom of Mapungubwe that traded with the Swahili people through Sofala in today’s Mozambique and Kilwa in today’s Tanzania, and with Arabia, India and China. The Vhangona tell stories of the demise of their beloved kingdom under the last king of Mapungubwe, King Shiriyadenga.
Since the artefacts of Mapungubwe were never exported to Britain or some other colonial country, their ownership reverted to the people of SA after the demise of apartheid. However, there is still a lot of other SA heritage that is only found in the museums of the US and the UK.
Some years back, I was writing about ubhala ubuyise, the beads amaZulu maidens made and exchanged with their lovers, communicating the ups and downs of the relationship. I studied these beads and learnt how the various patterns and colours were used to carry specific messages. The wonderful Phansi Museum in Durban is the only place where you can still see old ubhala ubuyise, but none of the beadwork dates beyond 50 years.
I had to go to the Robert Hull Fleming Museum in Vermont, in the US, where there is a whole collection dating from 1895 — not only ubhala ubuyise, but shoulder bands and matching tab collars, loin covers, widows’ necklaces, children’s strings of beads known as ingeje, and imibhijo. If you’re curious where amaZulu got beads before colonialism — at first they used cowrie shells, wood and various seeds, and then later traders came by way of Sofala with glass beads from Slovakia.
Further looting in SA was of human beings and human remains. This ranged from the ears of vanquished amaXhosa soldiers that British soldiers took with them as souvenirs after battle (amaXhosa are still crying for King Hintsa’s head) to black men who were exported to perform their “savagery” at human zoos and at circuses of curiosities and oddities in London and New York.
And, of course, there was Sara Baartman, the Khoikhoi woman who was enticed to Europe in the early 1800s to be part of freak shows because of her big buttocks — pathologised as steatopygia by academics. After her death, her remains were kept in a museum in Paris.
For many years South Africans fought for her repatriation, and finally succeeded in 2002 when her remains were returned, thanks to Nelson Mandela’s stature. After 200 years in a museum, many in a container, she is now buried in the Eastern Cape.
Baartman was only the beginning. There’s more that must be returned to Africa.
THE SA GOVERNMENT TRIED TO KEEP THE DISCOVERIES A SECRET BECAUSE IT PROVED AN AFRICAN CIVILISATION FROM 1000 CE TO 1300 CE