© AP – Virginia Mayo
Sculptures at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, August 3, 2018.
On the sidelines of the EU-AU summit, the Belgian Prime Minister and his Congolese counterpart met in Tervueren, a locality near Brussels where the Africa Museum stands, so that Alexander De Croo might hand over to Sama Lukonde the inventory of all objects from the DRC.
With our correspondent in Brussels, Pierre Benazet
A total of 84,000 objects appear on this list: more than two-thirds of the collections held by the Tervueren museum. Inaugurated 124 years ago by King Leopold II even before he was forced by the Belgian government to return the Congo to him as a colony, which was his personal property, this museum was called Palais des colonies then Musée de l’Afrique center and its funds were fed by essentially Congolese objects but also Burundian and Rwandan.
There are fetishes, agricultural objects, musical instruments or canoes and many of these objects have been uprooted from their land or from their owner. From 35 to 40,000 of them are in theory likely to return to the country as studies of their origin progress. Already, 1,500 to 2,000 objects might be returned immediately because they come from acts already illegal in the colonial era: looting, hostage taking and desecration.
The submission of this inventory to the Congolese Prime Minister is a symbolic step because the most important thing will be the adoption by the Belgian parliament ofa law already in draft : objects of colonial origin will no longer be part of the « inalienable heritage ” of the Kingdom.
Belgium has decided that this heritage will henceforth be subject to automatic restitution to Africa.
