Kinshasa (AFP)

A year after Dakar, Kinshasa: the Democratic Republic of Congo will inaugurate Saturday its great national museum, in a country that realistically addresses the passionate debate on the return of African heritage looted during the colonial era.

Located along the majestic Boulevard "Triomphal", next to the National Assembly, the National Museum of the Democratic Republic of Congo (MNRDC) was built by South Korea for $ 20 million.

A haven of peace opened to the public since June, the architecture of the "MNRDC" isolates the visitor from the sounds of the city: access portico with gallery of columns, inner courtyard with basins, huge sliding doors to enter the exhibition halls , interior terrace ...

On two levels, the three rooms present a tiny sample of the rich Congolese cultural and religious heritage. The approximately 400 works are arranged by major themes (challenges of existence, life cycle, cultural expression).

Funerary statuettes, metal mask with deep and mysterious expression, wooden mask with big grotesque cheeks for initiation rites ...: "These objects represent the creative genius of the Congolese people", summarizes the director general of the Institute of National Museums (INM), Paul Bakua-Lufu Badibanga.

"We tried to show the Congolese man in his environment, current and old," he adds.

This "national" museum gives pride of place to some of the 400 identified peoples along the Congo River and its tributaries (Luba, Tshokwe, Pende, Kongo ...). The museum is a mirror of the paradoxes of the Congolese identity, country-continent where persists community reflexes ("ethnic" or "tribal" say the Congolese).

The museum develops a too "colonial" approach to history and society, to the taste of professor of anthropology Placide Mumbembele: "At the entrance, you have the ethnic map of the country (NDR: in fact the enumeration of all its communities) One would think oneself in the colonial museums of the 30s or 40s. One does not present a society which evolves ".

- "Other emergencies" -

The scenographers chose the 400 works among the tens of thousands of pieces kept by the Institute of National Museums (45,000, of which 12,000 were transferred to the reserves of the new museum).

The others remained at the headquarters of the Institute, nestled on the heights of Kinshasa within the Mon-Ngaliema Presidential Park.

There, the objects are kept in precarious conditions. A hundred or so (including two armchairs of the former dictator Mobutu) are exposed in a dilapidated and poorly lit room.

As for the other museum of Kinshasa, the one dedicated to contemporary art, it exposes and preserves in "deplorable" conditions, according to one of its officials, the paintings of the masters of popular painting very popular on the market of art (Darling Samba, Moke, Pili Pili ...).

In these circumstances, the authorities do not ask the former colonial power, Belgium, for the immediate restitution of Congolese cultural property.

"We have other emergencies," President Felix Tshisekedi told the Belgian daily Le Soir before moving to Brussels in September.

The head of state probably thought of free primary education, a titanic challenge for the fragile public finances of the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa (2.3 million km2 for 80 million inhabitants, a vast majority of whom live in "generalized poverty," according to the IMF).

The Congolese position contrasts with Senegal's desire to recover all the pieces of its heritage preserved in France since the opening of the Museum of Black Civilization in Dakar a year ago.

"We are ready to take everything," said its director, Hamady Bocoum, last Sunday during the very symbolic restitution by France of a sword of the nineteenth century that belonged to the scholar El Hadj Omar.

The debate on the restitution is passionate since the publication at the end of 2018 of a report written at the request of French President Emmanuel Macron.

His two authors advocate a "quick restitution." One of them, the Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr, claims to be the target of a "lobby" of the opposing party: "We are objected that there would be no museums in Africa or skills, heritage would be at risk (...), "he said in January to the French magazine Express.

"Restitution is a legitimate question", delays in Kinshasa professor Placide Mumbembele, a specialist of the question.

"We must cooperate so that Congolese and Belgian researchers can work on the origin of the objects preserved at the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren." We can solve this question gently, and not with emotions that take over the reflection ", he adds.

Trade and temporary exhibitions can be a solution at first to appease the wounds of the history of art, and the story itself.

© 2019 AFP