An enormous mural in Windhoek’s Independence Memorial Museum, depicting members of the Namibian People’s Liberation Army (PLAN) blowing their horns as they assault the colonial masters’ troops, offered a celebratory backdrop because the Namibian-German delegation proudly introduced the return of 23 objects from the gathering of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin to Namibia.
“According to our records, the 23 pieces were obtained between 1860 and 1890,” defined Nehao Kautondokwa, chairperson of the Museums Association of Namibia (MAN), as she offered the reveals to the Namibian public for the primary time, collectively along with her colleagues from the Ethnological Museum, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the Gerda Henkel Foundation and the University of Namibia (UNAM), who have been all a part of the scientific cooperation challenge “Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envisioning Creative Futures.”
The items are on a regular basis objects, together with jewellery and garments. There is even a kids’s doll. “Every Namibian is represented through these items. That was one of the selection criteria,” provides Kautondokwa.
A gaggle of group representatives, artists, researchers and museum specialists from Namibia was fashioned to pick out the objects between 2019 and 2020.
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One of them was Ndapewoshali Ashipala, the performing Namibian Museums Association director. Taking half within the challenge was a wake-up name for her, she advised DW: “You look at an object and they say it belongs to one of the communities in the country. But you’ve never seen anything like it before!” She mentioned that these experiences motivated her to check historical past, specializing in beforehand unknown commerce relations between the Namibian ethnic teams.
Preparing for future returns
Goodman Gwasira, a lecturer at UNAM, which is one other challenge accomplice, takes delight in such tales. At the press convention, he defined how the colonial period incapacitated folks in Africa.
He added that the cooperation challenge will now assist Namibia develop native specialists and coaching packages to take care of such traditionally helpful objects. The objective can also be to organize for future returns, Gwasira mentioned.
Namibia might not but be prepared to just accept the estimated 12,000 Namibian objects from European museums, however as Gwasira rhetorically requested, “How prepared were the Europeans when they looted the items in the first place?”
He known as on the challenge companions to proceed working collectively to create the mandatory buildings in Namibia.
“The colleagues in Namibia are just as interested in preserving the objects as we were,” emphasised the director of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, Lars-Christian Koch.
Restitution or only a mortgage?
It is greater than a query of creating preservation capacities. The restitution of Namibian cultural property has all the time been a extremely emotional situation.
A current case was the restitution of the Bible and the whip of the Namibian people hero Hendrik Witbooi in early 2019, which was accompanied by a dispute on which authorities within the nation ought to be receiving them.
Now the return of the 23 objects have additionally triggered criticism on social media, as a result of strictly talking, it’s not a return, however only a mortgage.
However, in accordance with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the time period was chosen for purely bureaucratic causes. A mortgage may very well be determined extra rapidly by the muse, so the cooperation companions initially agreed on a “permanent loan.”
“The pieces that are supposed to stay here will stay here. And that definitely applies to the 23 objects,” Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation President Hermann Parzinger advised DW in Windhoek.
The board of trustees will meet in June, when they may set up the phrases for an official return. “Then the Namibian side has to reclaim the items, but the process will be relatively simple since the objects are already in the country,” added museum director Koch.
‘Rewriting history from a Namibian perspective’
Meanwhile, Namibia is now about to start the analysis course of on the 23 reveals at the moment housed within the National Museum of Namibia.
According to the Namibian companions’ needs, the general public also needs to be concerned within the course of to presumably uncover information about Namibia’s cultural heritage that has maybe already been forgotten.
“We want to rewrite the history surrounding the artifacts from a Namibian perspective, to explore the true origins and meaning of the pieces,” defined Nehao Kautondokwa, chairperson of the Museums Association of Namibia.
The challenge will run till 2024. During the press convention in Windhoek, nevertheless, it turned clear that different cultural property from Germany also needs to be returned to Namibia sooner or later.
And in accordance with the desires of Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the reveals may sooner or later journey again in the other way once more: “In many countries in the world, an exchange of items on loan is quite normal. Why shouldn’t it be the same with Namibia?”
This article was initially written in German.