The never-ending discourse to have stolen African artefacts by colonial powers returned home has gathered pace. Harriet James interrogates this emotive issue that has got artists fuming.

For decades, African museums and artifacts have been pushing for the repatriation of African cultural artifacts that were looted and plundered by the colonialists over centuries.

Most museums in Europe and North America have for many years displayed physical cultural heritage from various regions of sub-Sahara Africa, which were taken from their owners by force.

Those against the repatriation argue that the artefacts are a part of a universal human history and that encyclopaedic museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), Musée du Louvre (Paris) and British Museum (London) assist in the dissemination of the knowledge as well as give a broader cultural understanding.

However, proponents argue that it is morally correct to do and that it portrays the basic adherence of property laws, which state that looted or stolen stuff should be returned to their rightful owners.

In a recent webinar dubbed Searching for Kenya’s cultural identity – Artistic and Scholarly Research into Kenyan Objects in International Collections, which was organised by DAAD East Africa, Kenyan scholars and researchers discussed on the issue of restitution and the efforts that the Kenya museum is putting in bringing Kenyan objects home.

Funded by the German government, the International Inventories Programme (IIP) is an international research and database project that gained momentum in the country since 2017.

The programme aims to open up the discourse on the stolen artefacts by bringing in African perspectives on the issue that has not yet been represented in international debates.

The project was undertaken by the National Museums of Kenya (NMK), Nairobi-based arts collective The Nest and German social enterprise Shift, with an aim to have the artefacts in the UK, Germany and US featured in Kenya’s permanent or temporary exhibitions.

The pursuit

“In as much as cultural heritage is inaccessible to the Kenyan public and the academia, the IIP’s main objective is to narrow this knowledge gap that exists when it comes to cultural objects. We researched and found a lot of misinformation, errors and derogatory terms used with regards to how the objects were acquired, the context as well as their purpose ‘of the objects,” explains Juma Ondeng’, an NMK cultural heritage professional.

Since the early 70s, the NMK has been lobbying museums in Europe to facilitate the return of stolen artefacts. One of the challenges they’ve faced was getting sponsors from the museums to assist in the pursuit, but so far Germany has responded and the project has brought together constellation of cultural entities including the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Weltkulturen Museum, Nest and Shift collectives.

Alongside that, they have also started the “Object Movement Dialogues series of events that public discourse on histories of critical objects, in particular on how they were violently transported across borders and the aftermath of such movements.

The findings are all recorded in the IIP database and have currently identified 32,501 objects stored in 30 institutions across four countries.

“The database is now live and accessible to the public. Museums are increasingly opening up their archives to scholars and researchers in a bid to create more transparency, correct misinformation and establish the true ownership of the objects in their possession,” says IIP project coordinator Sheila Akwany.

She adds that the efforts made by initiatives such as the IIP are a step toward cataloguing these objects.

However, more work still needs to be done by the government in putting forth claims for these objects to be returned to the rightful communities.

Artefacts such as the vigango from Rabai in Kilifi county, have been returned. Vigango are carved, wooden artefacts and a sacred representation of reincarnated spirits usually planted on graves of prominent people.

Fighting spirit

“When we started, the European countries never understood why this repatriation is important and why it’s an issue to us.

However, with the conversations, they learnt the gravity of the issue and why we are fighting and have been supportive ever since,” says researcher and producer Junniah Wamaitha.

She is elated that with the returned 32,000 objects, generations to come will have a chance to learn about the history of their country and tribes.

In their research, they discovered that there is still scanty knowledge on some of the artefacts.

“When we went to Eldoret, for example, we discovered that the children didn’t know about heroes such as Koitalel arap Samoei, whose head is still locked up in a British museum.

There are still more artefacts out there and we must fight to bring them back,” she says.

So far, there have been collaborations between researchers and museum staff both in Germany and Kenya and this has led to additional info that has been updated on the database.

The knowledge was created by going to the communities and asking the elders about when, who, how and why a specific object was used.

For instance, they discovered that Ndome, a Kikuyu artifact that looks like an armament, was used in battle and also as a dance shield.

“We are building a publicly accessible database of these objects, thus pushing for more transparency within museums’ archives.

While we found objects domiciled in Germany, we discovered some information in Kenya which researchers never knew about and also didn’t know what to do with the knowledge,” notes Odeng’, adding that the museum has been working with artists who have radical ideas on the issues and desired a new agenda to be implemented fast.

“The radical activism has been an eye opener and a wakeup call on how we approach stuff and also how we work collaboratively with artists as well as museum professionals.”

Looting spree

Some of the ways the colonialists used to get the materials were so crude that scholars have called this a cultural genocide.

For instance, in 1925, the British used the Witchcraft Act to make African practice look like black magic.

Through also religious concessions, Africans were required to submit their objects of worship and any other thing that looked like they were not worshiping or adhering to the western values.

Sometimes the looting of African objects by curators, anthropologists as well as private collectors occurred during war, acts that were justified as of benevolence or saving dying knowledge.

Some of the objects that were stolen from Kenya include kiti cha enzi, a throne that belonged to the Witu kingdom in 1890.

Art was also used by criminals as collateral to secure loans and in such circumstances, it is estimated that only 10 per cent of the art was recovered.

“As art dealers sold these objects, they hyped their significance to make a sale and this distorted the knowledge and history behind the items.

We currently have been looking for the objects and writing the correct knowledge based on what we have found on research,” Ondeng’ notes.

The regulations, which were set specifically to safeguard cultural heritage, were introduced after the Second World War with the creation of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), and Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict in 1954.

In 1970, the General Conference of Unesco provided an international framework that prevents theft, looting as well as the return and restitution of stolen cultural property.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron has been vocal about the issue and even commissioned a report in 2018 on the various African relics that are held in France.

In other countries like the Netherlands, an advisory committee was set up and advised the government to return the objects that were taken from the country without consent.

Britain, which is leading in the number of contested items, have also been calling for the return of the Benin Bronzes when the British soldiers embarked on a punitive expedition in Benin in 1897.

In the UK, repatriation has been heated debates over the issue however, no formal legislation has been enacted to outline the procedures to be undertaken during repatriation and the work has been charged to the museum authority as well as government guidelines like the 1994 Museum Ethnographers’ Group.

As a result, there are variations on how repatriation is done, which normally depends on the institution’s attitude on it.

Sam Hopkins of the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany, recommends that the African Union should be involved in negotiating for the artefacts’s restitution to Africa instead of having communities running abroad on their own to demand for their repatriation.

He says in conclusion, “It is easier when it’s a bilateral or a multilateral engagement rather than individuals going to a museum demanding for the artefacts.

Governments or institutions such as the African Union can engage with their former colonial powers and come to an agreement on how such valuable objects can come back to their place of origin.”