Scholars, curators and artists discussed the colonial legacy and the future of the museum in Namibia.
Lively discussions also took place with the audience Photo: Shawn van Eeden/CreativeLab
Nervously, Nehoa Hilma Kautondokwa runs a hand through her hair. The young manager of the Namibian Museum Society has just shown her audience pictures of jewelry and artifacts: a dagger with an ornate brass scabbard, a Kandina doll created around 1900 by Queen Olugondo of Ondonga.
A total of 1,400 such historical artifacts and pieces of jewelry are stored in the Namibia collection of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. The majority arrived in Germany during the German colonial period between 18.
Kautondokwa and other researchers from Namibia traveled to Berlin in the spring as part of the binational museum project "Confronting Colonial Pasts, Envisioning Creative Futures" to study the objects together with German scholars. The result of the collaboration so far: 23 objects will be shipped to Namibia, at a cost of 100,000 euros for transport, and there – returned? No, they will be loaned out for three years for further research.
Resentment arises in the audience. Kautondokwa tries to explain the situation: that the investigation is extremely difficult because most of the objects are contaminated with arsenic; that the exact origin of most of the objects is still unclear and the legal situation is tricky. That Hermann Parzinger, head of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, had signaled a willingness to permanently return the works – but all that is lost in an increasingly agitated discussion.
"Germany is dishonest!" exclaims an audience member from Tanzania. "All these concepts of ‘shared heritage’ are shams that are used to string us along," finds another. Germany should simply return all the looted things, he says. "I know that’s little," says researcher Kautondokwa in a low voice. "But it’s a start."
Emotions ran high throughout the Museum Talks, which took place Sept. 18-20 in the Namibian capital of Windhoek. At the invitation of the Goethe-Institut and the University of Namibia (Unam), scholars, museum professionals and artists from African and European countries met to discuss the future of African museums from a postcolonial perspective. "We cannot have a common future without talking about the past," emphasized Unam President Erica Maass in her welcoming speech – and set the tone for the following three days.
"Perennial issue" restitution
Museums have emerged that make suppressed narratives visible
The panel discussions and workshops focused on how museums on the continent can step out of the shadow of colonial heritage and develop new, genuinely African approaches.
But the discussion also focused on the "perennial issues" in the European-African debate: the restitution of African cultural assets by the former colonial powers – and the repatriation of human skulls and bones, tens of thousands of which are stored in European depots. The pain and anger that still accompany the reappraisal of the colonial era in Africa are particularly localized in these so-called "human remains.
"We are not sitting here together in front of a nice background," emphasized Kenyan archaeologist George Abungu, an expert advisor to the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. "We are talking about genocide, slavery and other crimes for which Europe must take political responsibility."
That responsibility, he said, includes not only active provenance research by museums and medical history institutions and subsequent respectful repatriation of the remains, but also an appropriate apology from the former colonial powers. Another participant gets harsher: "Museums are crime scenes – they should be cleared out and cleaned up!" demands Wandile Kasibe, program coordinator at the Iziko Museum in Cape Town.
Germany has already returned human remains to its former colony of Southwest Africa, now Namibia, on several occasions. While the first repatriation of skulls on which German scientists had conducted racial research was still done with little delicacy in cardboard boxes, people gradually learned:
The last repatriation in 2018 in Berlin was celebrated with a memorial service. Present were Namibian government representatives and emissaries of the OvaHerero and Nama, those ethnic groups on which the "Schutztruppen" under the leadership of Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha had committed genocide with tens of thousands of deaths from 1904 to 1908.
Michelle Muntefering, minister of state at the German Foreign Office, asked for forgiveness for the injustice in August. But many expect an apology at the highest levels of government – the Namibian government also wants reparations for looted land, and negotiations have been ongoing for years.
"Germany gets all the rage"
In the airy, wood-roofed conference room of the Habitat Centre in Windhoek, there is no consensus: has Germany apologized adequately or not? "Germany is getting all the rage, which is actually also directed at other former colonial powers," observes Ciraj Rassool, head of the African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studies at the University of the Western Cape and a prominent voice in the African discussion.
Germany, he says, is now leading the restitution debate, while France’s President Macron has rowed back after his full-throated announcement to return "everything." Great Britain is even turning a deaf ear. But French and British cultural workers are not present in Windhoek.
So it is up to Wiebke Ahrndt, director of the ubersee-Museum in Bremen, or Sandra Ferracuti, curator at the Linden-Museum in Stuttgart, to emphasize again and again how serious their formerly colonially positioned houses are about decolonization. "We want to and will restitute, the legal foundations are there," Ahrndt emphasizes, referring to a new guideline for museums that governs repatriations.
The fact that it sometimes takes so long in practice is often due to the uncertainty as to whom exactly the objects are to be returned. Sometimes it is unclear who speaks for whom in the countries of origin – and who makes the final decision.
In the case of the Witbooi Bible and whip returned by Baden-Wurttemberg at the end of February, the question was whether to restitute to the descendants of the Nama community or to the government. Today, the Bible and whip are stored, inaccessible to the public, in the depot of the Namibian National Museum, whose natural science and zoology site is poorly maintained and underfunded.
Allergic reactions
Any doubts about whether contemporary African states had adequate museum infrastructure or actually represented the interests of the deprived tribes provoked allergic reactions from African participants in Windhoek. "With whom to negotiate is not a decision of the former colonial powers. Our independent governments are to be respected in any case," emphasizes Angolan curator Suzana Sousa, for example. The focus of her presentation on successful restitution, however, is a private foundation that brings objects to Angola without any government involvement.
The fact that cultural policy in many African states is pursued externally in a manner guided by interests and less actively internally remains unaddressed here. The political is to be left out of the equation; the past is already complicated enough.
And then there is the future: "What is the museum of the future?" was one of the guiding questions of the conference. There is a lot happening in Africa: Recently, new museums like the "Musee des Civilisations Noires" in Dakar, Senegal, which is oriented toward Pan-Africanism, opened. Nigeria wants to build its own museum for the soon expected return of the famous Benin bronzes.
Other museum concepts are intended to make previously suppressed narratives visible. These include the small District Six Museum in Cape Town, which commemorates forced resettlements during apartheid, or the private museum in Somaliland, founded by a retired UN employee, which recalls local ways of life before the war. ‘Why do museums have to be houses at all?’ ask some invited artists, presenting ideas for a roving "museum capsule" or the re-enactment of local royal mores in the cityscape.
Berlin’s nearly completed Humboldt Forum presents itself as a European museum of the future. Of the postcolonially sensitive exhibition concepts of the curatorial duo Lavinia Frey and Lars-Christian Koch, however, many participants are left with only the pseudo-Baroque house façade and the division between "European" and "non-European collections" retained from the colonial era. When the Humboldt Forum opens in 2020, it will be under scrutiny by an international museum community that plans to meet for further discussions after Windhoek.
We thank the Goethe-Institut for research support.