BY DR TONY M MONDA
For the greater part of the previous two centuries, indigenous people the world over have been divested of almost every traditional object that they owned.
Two-thirds of the West’s museums, particularly the British Museum and Louvre in Paris are filled with African artefacts from Egypt to South Africa.
Movable cultural heritage includes objects that some people create and others may collect, which will ultimately form an important part of a nation’s identity. These objects are known as cultural property and can be artistic, technological, historical or natural in origin.
The mass looting of indigenous artefacts and cultural trappings acquired during the rise of European colonialism was led by the British, French, Belgians and Germans under the pretext of acquiring knowledge.
Part of this knowledge base included human body parts and animals which are still kept in specimen boxes in Western museums furnished by Colonial plundering during their conquests of the 18th and early 19th Centuries. Some Zimbabwean artefacts dating from this period can be found in the Iowa, Dallas, Toledo Museums and various private collections worldwide.
Most objects on display in Western museums are a result of plunder and are tangible reminders of the power held by those who gaze at them; without them their museums would be empty!
The UNESCO Convention on the ‘Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property’ held In 1970, established for the first time international guidelines for cultural property of all kinds to be protected by all Nations and be the subject of repatriation when illicitly removed.
The Convention’s definition encompassed as cultural property “all possible objects of importance to archaeology, anthropology, history, literature, art, or science, including fauna, flora, minerals, palaeontology, monuments or parts of archaeological sites, antiquities, all types of artworks, incunabula, documents, of all sorts, furniture and musical instruments, and all archival materials – except people”.
The 1970 Convention developed through inter-governmental dialogue was ratified by 141 States, to provide a common framework not only for countries to take measures to prohibit and prevent the import, export and transfer of cultural property, but also provide the conditions for its return and restitution.
In the case of Zimbabwe, this includes the remains of our heroes we strongly believe are the skulls of beheaded heads of Mbuya Nehanda, Sekuru Kaguvi, Chingaira Makoni, Mapondera, Chinengundu Mashayamombe, Mashonganyika and Chitekedza Chiwashira among others, that are part of our cultural patrimony.
They have an ongoing historical, traditional, and cultural importance which is central to our indigenous social-historical organization.
It was not until the late in the 1980s and 1990s that the concept of repatriation and restitution for indigenous people and their culture developed into a component of contemporary cultural discourse in Western academia. The return and restitution of cultural property became an increasingly prominent issue in more recent years.
Since adoption of the UNESCO Convention, increasing collaboration between national police services, as well as through Interpol, has seen multiple returns of looted and illicitly trafficked items.
Recent examples include the 3,500-year-old “Gilgamesh Tablet”, one of the oldest literary works in history; which was formally handed back to Iraq by the United States of America, and the voluntary handover of a fragment of the “Piedras Negrasstela” from a private collector to Guatemala, made possible through the international cooperation of Guatemala, France and UNESCO.
In recent years, there has been an increase in demands for the restitution of artefacts from the colonial era reflecting a shift in North-South policy discussions towards renewed dialogue on culture. The 1970 Convention provides a framework for such policy discussions and encourages hese bilateral efforts.
In Zimbabwe, the legal instruments applicable to culture and heritage (and art), which should have been put into effect at Independence in 1980, were only affected as late as 2002, leaving lawyers scrambling in their briefcases and scouring the internet for laws of repatriation, which had not been thought about until then. Zimbabwe became a signatory to the UNESCO Convention for safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003.
It is disheartening that in the 21st Century we still have controlling Western institutions who think that artefacts wrenched from former colonies by violent, illegitimate methods should be kept by the custodians in the West. Surely this arrogant position proves that the West has not rejected colonialism and its effects, despite the various United Nations resolutions.
Former President Robert Gabriel Mugabe lamented the grossly inhumane acts of decapitating and shipping the human remains our heroes to the UK and denounced Britain for its sadism saying:
“Surely keeping decapitated heads as war trophies in a national history museum, in this day and age, must rank among the highest forms of racist moral decadence, sadism and human insensitivity. . . ”
It is time that indigenous people the world over reclaim and restitute what belongs to them. The restitution of our heroes will not only educate, but stimulate discussion on issues such as identity, history, culture and human relationships, but will help to bring our history alive in a very unique context.
Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD. in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA in Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. E-mail: tonym.MONDA@gmail.com
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