Former colonial masters, Belgium and Germany, are willing to return to Rwanda cultural heritage unlawfully held and preserved for years, Amb. Robert Masozera, Director-General of the Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy, has told The New Times.
Good progress has been made, Masozera noted, though he could not specify exactly when Rwandan heritage, preserved in Belgium and Germany, will be returned.
Belgium in 2018 made announcements indicating readiness to relinquish the Rwandan cultural treasures.
Masozera said: “Over the past three years, a lot of work has already been done: Belgian institutions have prepared and made available to Rwanda inventories to help prioritise the archives to be digitised.”
He noted that Belgian institutions have already finalised the digitisation of several collections such as films and photos on Rwanda as well as the inventory of ethnographic and historical objects of Rwanda.
“As you can see, the process is well underway. We are waiting for the conditions of Covid-19 to ease to speed up the process.”
In Belgium, the artefacts are mainly kept by the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA-Africa Museum) and the General Archives of the Belgian Kingdom (AGR), he said.
Masozera said the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren (Africa Museum), for example, alone has more than 2,000 objects and more than 30,000 photographs, while the archives relating to Rwanda held by Belgian institutions are well over 3.5 linear kilometres.
In Germany, Masozera said, the human remains are kept at the Museum of Pre- and Early History at the Humboldt University in Berlin, at the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory; the ethnographic objects are at the Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig.
Among the objects include 904 skulls collected in Rwanda before the First World War.
“The heritage that has been brought abroad is mainly cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible. It comprises heritage objects: collections of ethnographic and archaeological museums; human remains, remains of our ancestors – skulls and probably complete bodies; and archives,” Masozera said.
The archives are written, photographic, audio and video documents produced by the colonial administration, army staff, missionaries, explorers, researchers, travelers and traditional authorities, he explained.
Then there are also natural collections: zoological, botanical and geological samples.
“These objects were collected by researchers, anthropologists, missionaries, ethnographers and archaeologists and even tourists. Collectors were all interested in ‘racial studies’. They were taken to show the superiority of European civilization over that of our ancestors,” Masozera said.
“Belgium has already expressed its willingness to share, in digital form, the archives of Rwanda kept in its public institutions. The project is in good progress. Germany is also willing to repatriate the human remains from Rwanda held by the Museum of Prehistory and Early National Museums in Berlin. This project is also in good progress.”
Why is repatriation important?
Masozera explained that the repatriation of Rwanda’s heritage is not only legitimate, but the return of these objects could contribute to the socio-economic development and “cultural pride of our nation.”
The Rwandan cultural heritage objects selected by the Europeans “are in fact the best specimens, by their exceptional quality, aesthetic, and finesse,” he said, giving examples such as basketry, and wickerwork, and also by their sacredness, “for example, spiritual symbols, and symbols of traditional power.”
Not only do they embody the Rwandan identity, but the fact that these cultural treasures have been preserved for a very long time outside Rwanda, Masozera noted, created a huge gap in the knowledge of Rwandan history and culture, and has disconnected most Rwandans from their ancestral tradition.
Cultural objects, especially archives abroad, are primary sources that can help shed light on important aspects of Rwanda’s history, Masozera said.