Justice demands that Europe gives back treasures stolen from Africa

Rare artefacts and antiques sold at Africana Curio Shop along Sagana-Karatina Road. [File, Standard]

A recent story of international importance might have skipped your attention concerning theft of over 2,000 items from the British Museum in London over a ten-year period.

The haul included gold coins and jewelry as well as pottery and bronze items. What made the story more fascinating and ridiculous is much of the swag ended up being sold on eBay and the museum curator apparently never knew a thing about it.

So much for the Western argument that museums are the safest repository for cultural material artefacts.

What museums and nations never admit is that much of what they display in galleries has been stolen from around the world, especially from Africa.

Put another way, museums are displaying the booty that resulted from the ransacking of African kingdoms, houses of worship and governance down the centuries.

Perhaps the best-known example of this rape and theft is that of the Benin bronzes in Nigeria. Benin city kingdom was the largest manmade structure on earth and one of the last active kingdoms when the British ransacked it in 1897, killed thousands, raised the structures to the ground and carried off 10,000 bronze items much of which they sold around the world. However, 1,000 items ended up in the British museum as spoils of the massacre.

Much of this and a whole lot more is found in "Africa is not a Country" by Dipo Faloyin, the best and most thought-provoking book I have read this year. He says 90 per cent of Africa's material cultural legacy resides out of Africa. According to his research, Belgium has 120,000 items mostly looted from the DRC.

France has at least 96,000 such objects. But much of what museums have in their possession is not on display, but hoarded away in warehouses and stores and not even recorded in a database.

For example, the British museum only displays 100 of the 1,000 Benin bronzes, the rest is gathering dust or maybe even unknowingly stolen from their stockpile.

Yet museum curators around the world have little or no intention of returning the looted treasures to their geographical homes. It is as if they are saying they are safer with thieves than with the creators and rightful owners of the valuables and they call this "safe keeping".

They speak of "Universal museums" claiming the treasures are available to the whole world to view as if Africans are likely to travel to London to view what was stolen from them.

The other warped logic is that while admitting it is wrong to steal, they are insisting it is okay to keep the stolen property.

Restorative justice demands that what was stolen should be returned to its rightful owners. Besides, the arguments against restitution are crumbling by the day.

The demand for restitution got a huge boost with the whole Black Lives Matter movement that developed from the racist murder of George Floyd in the US in 2020. Statues of slave owners and colonial dictators crumbled during mass protests around the globe. Then the matter of returning African treasures resurfaced and some European leaders made small gestures towards giving back a few valuables. However, 90 per cent of the items are still found outside the continent.

In 2020, a Belgian court ordered return of a tooth of Patrice Lumumba to his family in the DRC. In case you may have forgotten, that tooth was the only item that survived when his body was dissolved in acid after his assassination in 1961.

A small victory for justice but a significant one as thousands took to the streets to view when it was brought home to Kinshasa. Of course, more is needed.

Giving back what was stolen is restoring justice and dignity to the continent. Indeed, many African countries would loan out some of those treasures to museums worldwide while retaining the majority for the heritage of the next generation.

The struggle continues and it will go on long after the treasures have been returned as the rape of the continent's natural as well as material resources needs to soon be addressed.