Scandal of the CENTURY!!!!!

 Ladies and gentlemen, scandals and pieces of gossip-in other words snippets are totally not my thing.

But you are most definitely going to wanna hear this.

So, our little white friends in Europe don't want to let go of  our artifacts which have become their favourite toys because they generate lots of income for them. To them, our artifacts have become more like magic lamps, all they have to do is rub them and 'ka-ching!' Their dreams will come true.

Not to mention,those artifacts were oh so graciously stolen by our white ex-lords.

Let's go back in time for a little story;

Long long ago, by which I mean in the year 1890 the French men staged a beleaguerment (bloody) in the Segou Royal Palace 

the capital of the Toucouleur empire that spanned modern day Guinea, Senegal and Mali. This siege and the violent capture of the city of Ouossebougou in 1890 marked the end of the Toucouleur empire and the transfer of control of the region to French colonial rule.

In addition to the loss of lives and the destruction of property, the French officials plundered over a thousand pieces of significant cultural heritage to the people—including the saber of the founder of the empire, El Hadj Omar Tall.

Almost 130 years later, the saber that bears a specific symbolic,  cultural and spiritual significance has finally been returned to Senegal in a very emotional hand-over ceremony that saw his ancestral family travel from various parts of West Africa to witness this historic moment. It was a moment of victory for the descendants of the anti-colonial hero, who have been demanding the return of his artifacts since 1944. The artifacts including the saber, manuscripts, jewels are mostly spread out across three of France’s largest museums.

In Ethiopia,  Afromet (the Association For the Return Of the Magdala Ethiopian Treasures) has fought for the return of cultural items seized by the British army at Magdala in 1868. Last year, the country got a sort of bitter-sweet response to their request for the return of artifacts including a gold crown and a royal wedding dress, which were taken during the battle at Magdala.

For the past three years, Benin has been officially asking France back for the return of anthropomorphic (half human-half animal) statues that were looted during the sacking of the Abomey place in 1892. The statues have both a spiritual and historic value for Benin and are irreplaceable pieces of cultural property and heritage.

There is also the issue of the Bangwa Queen of Cameroon,an ancient and precious artifact stolen by one of the German members of the looters' and pillegers' club. 

Historical records have it that Gustav Conrau, a German colonial agent was able to attain the Bangwa Queen sculputure by very questionable means from a Royal Shrine in Bangwa  grasslands region of what we today call, Cameroon. 

Our fine gentleman entered the village with the excuse of seeking trade relations and later snatched the two thousand year old expensive piece of cultural symbolism. 

It was later, in the year 1990 sold at a New York auction for a whooping  $3.4 million. Making it the most expensive at the time. 

 The Bangwa Queen, Cameroon. 

Up to 90% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s material cultural legacy is outside of the continent, according to the French government-commissioned 2018 report by Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and French historian Bénédicte Savoy. The report calls for the restitution of Africa’s stolen assets highlighting that most of these were looted by European colonial powers, stolen during ethnographic missions or acquired under questionable conditions in various markets.

The countries mentioned above are but a drop in  the ocean when the matter of victims of stolen precious artifacts are mentioned in Africa 

While the public focuses on these artifacts, repatriation encompasses various elements of African cultural heritage. This includes art and archives, ceremonial objects, human remains-like that of the unclaimed body of Ota Benga from the United States and countless other bodies- ,natural history specimens, and intangible cultural heritage like sound recordings and photographs. The best-case scenario figure for the number of artifacts any national museum archives in Sub Saharan Africa is 3,000—and even then, most of them are of little importance or significance when compared to those in European museums.

In the United States Museums today are countless African artifacts that slowly loose their cultural value and will be soon forgotten by the sons of Africa. Over Ten African countries officially asking for these artifacts to be returned, what about those which have not even been identified? Will they too be lost in time or be collected by some privelleged collector of artifacts, to be but a mere decoration or trophy?

White people make it so hard to take the highroad, so high Road is a hard pass!

Source :  Quartz.com  and Face2face Africa.