The Tiffany d iamond
And other stolen African treasures
THERE has been a long-standing debate about the need to return Africa’s stolen treasures, which are stashed all over the world. About 80 – 90% of the continent's treasures are held outside Africa.
These treasures include precious metals, carvings, artefacts, human remains and manuscripts that were taken away from the continent under questionable circumstances. From Africa, these treasures were sold overseas at auctions or exchanged as gifts.
The latest ad campaign by jewellery company Tiffany & Co, featuring powerhouse couple, the singer Beyoncé and her rapper husband Jay-Z, has again reignited the debate about the return of these treasures.
In the ad campaign, Beyoncé is seen wearing a necklace with the iconic 128-carat yellow diamond which was found in 1877 in Kimberley, in the Northern Cape. The diamond features an unprecedented 82 facets.
According to the company, the stone was purchased by company founder Charles Lewis Tiffany for $18 000. His gemologist, George Frederick Kunz, studied the gem for a year before beginning to cut it, reducing it from 287 carats (57.5g) to its current size. The cutting was carried out in Paris. The diamond is reportedly now worth over $30 million (about R446m).
The new crop of campaigners for the restitution of stolen African treasures, like Tandazani Dhaklama, an assistant curator at Zeitz Mocaa in Cape Town, argue that these treasures need to be returned to the continent.
“Africans deserve the right to engage with and see themselves in their own culture, their own heritage on African soil,” Dhaklama said.
Writing on why Africa’s stolen treasures must be returned, in the New Africa, Onyekachi Wambu, the executive director of the African Foundation for Development, says these treasures left the continent at a period of a great imbalance in power.
“The return of African icons, human and cultural, looted during the periods of slavery, empire and colonialism, is essential for us to revisit and re-engage with these important aspects of African history, ideas, personalities and aesthetics. The icons are the naissance of the AU’s 2063 renaissance agenda,” said Wambu.
Here is a list of some of the treasures taken from Africa and currently held outside the continent:
1.The Cullinan I diamond, also known as the Star of Africa.
It’s the world’s largest diamond, found in South Africa on January 26, 1905, and it was taken away from the country during colonisation. Today it’s used by the British Monarchy in their Crown Jewels selection.
In 1907, the province of Transvaal’s colonial government bought the rough Cullinan and gifted it to British King Edward VII on his 66th birthday for granting Transvaal its own constitution the previous year. (Source: Britannica)
2.Incomparable Diamond
Discovered in the 1980s as an 890carat rough stone by a young girl in mining rubble from the nearby Miba Diamond Mine in the town of Mbuji Mayi, Democratic Republic of Congo, the 407.48-carat Incomparable is the third-largest diamond in the world.
The stone found its way through Africa to De Beers director Sir Philip Oppenheimer, before it was sold to Texas-based jewellery store chain Zale Corporation in partnership with New York’s Premier Gems Corporation.
In 2013 it was unveiled at the Doha Jewellery and Watch Exhibition. Mouawad’s 637-carat L’Incomparable has 90 other white diamonds accompanying it. It is the world’s second-most expensive necklace, and is worth an estimated $55m. (Source: NS Energy and independent nuclear technical journal)
3.Maqdala Treasures
The Maqdala treasures include an 18th century gold crown and a royal wedding dress taken from Ethiopia (formerly Abyssinia) by the British army in 1868. Among these treasures are the tabots (Christian plaques), which were taken along with hundreds of other precious items – processional crosses, gold and silver jewellery, illustrated manuscripts.
According to the Association for the Return of the Maqdala Ethiopian Treasures (Afromet), whose members are historians and notable academics, an expert from the British Museum was even brought along to bid for some of the choicest items. Fifteen elephants and 200 mules were needed to cart away all the loot from Maqdala.
In 2018 the BBC reported that the collection sits in a storeroom of the British Museum and nobody is allowed to see it.
4.The “Benin Bronzes”
Created from at least the 16th century, the Benin Bronzes are a group of sculptures which include elaborately decorated cast plaques, commemorative heads, animal and human figures, items of royal regalia and personal ornaments.
On the British Museum website it’s stated that in 1887 British soldiers raided the Kingdom of (modern day Southern Nigeria), torched the royal palace and looted thousands of works of art, among them Benin Bronzes.
Thousands of these ceremonial and ritual objects were taken to the UK as official “spoils of war” or distributed among members of the expedition according to their rank.
The Benin collections can be found in the British Museum and all over Europe, including in the US where there are important collections in Chicago, Boston, New York, Denver and Philadelphia.
5.The Bangwa Queen
A wooden carving that is about 81cm tall, it’s of spiritual importance to the Bangwa, a people indigenous to the western part of Cameroon.
Being one of the world’s most famous artefacts of African nature, the sculpture was taken by German colonialist Gustav Conrau in 1899 and found its way to the Ethnological Museum of Berlin before being sold for a record $3.4 million at an auction in New York. It is currently part of a French museum collection. (Source: Cambridge University Press)