The DRC launches a national commission on the repatriation of Congolese cultural heritage

Sculptures at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, August 3, 2018. AP - Virginia Mayo

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

The DRC has chosen the theme “ 

 ” for its rotating presidency of the African Union.

This sheds new light on the question of African heritage transported en masse to Europe during the colonial period.

Belgium will table a bill in early 2022 to initiate restitution.

Advertising

Read more

With our correspondent in Brussels,

For the Congo, it is in Belgium that the vast majority of works are to be found.

The President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Félix Tshisekedi, has therefore announced the launch of a national commission on the repatriation of Congolese cultural heritage.

For their part, the Belgian authorities have already largely started the movement.

Belgium has decided to take the bull by the horns so as not to expose itself to controversies concerning ad hoc restitution decisions.

There has been no restitution yet because the current federal government has decided to take a systematic approach.

For the moment, all the objects are gradually listed and identified, and depending on their provenance they will automatically be eligible for restitution.

The Belgian government intends to introduce, at the beginning of 2022, a bill to make automatic the restitution of African objects: a considerable number will be downgraded and will no longer be part of the inalienable heritage of the kingdom.

►

Up to 40,000 potentially eligible parts

85,000 Congolese objects populate the collections of the “Africa Museum” in Tervuren, at the gates of Brussels.

Formerly "Royal Museum of Central Africa", it is the former "Palace of the Colonies" launched in 1897 by King Leopold II, the monarch at the origin of colonization.

There are three countries in the Belgian colonial past, Congo-Kinshasa from 1885, and the double protectorate of Ruanda-Urundi after the German defeat of 1918. But it is mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo that the immense majority of the works present in the kingdom. 

Almost half, or 35,000 to 40,000, of these objects could ultimately be eligible for restitution in the Congo. The easiest will be for objects whose provenance is clearly doubtful: for example, objects acquired with methods already illegal in colonial times such as " 

 ". We are starting to have a first evaluation here, but 1,500 to 2,000 pieces are already considered to be badly acquired according to this first criterion.

The heritage will have to come back from Belgium, but in an organized way.

There should first be an effort to reconstitute representative collections of certain ethnic groups.

The rest will take more time because the new Congolese national museum can only accommodate 12,000 pieces for the moment in optimal conditions of conservation.

Newsletter

Receive all international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

• DRC

• Belgium

• Culture

• Patrimony

• Arts