The government is in the process of negotiating with the United Kingdom government in order to repatriate the human remains of national heroes whose dismembered bodies are held in some museums.
Addressing the media yesterday, Information Minister , Monica Mutsvagwa said a delegation has been sent to UK to negotiate a way forward to the long waited repatriation process.
The delegation being led by National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe has so far held talks with six universities in the UK.
“The team held meetings with six museums, namely the Natural History Museum, the British Museum, the University of Cambridge Duckworth Laboratory, the University of Oxford Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Manchester Museum and the National Archives,” Mutsvagwa noted.
“The objectives of the mission included to access and assess migrated archives including Rhodesian Military and Intelligence records and negotiate for their repatriation and to identify cultural artefacts in British institutions and initiate dialogue for their possible repatriation,” said Mutsvangwa.
Talks have been going on since December 2014 over the potential repatriation of Zimbabwean human remains.
The most prominent of these remains are the skulls of spiritual leader Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana and the other iconic heroes of the First Chimurenga between 1896-7 against Cecil Rhodes’ encroaching British South African Company.
Nehanda and the other heroes were captured and hanged, and their skulls taken to London.
In 2015, Zimbabwe’s then President Mugabe added his voice for their return: “The First Chimurenga leaders, whose heads were decapitated by the colonial occupying force, were then dispatched to England, to signify British victory over, and subjugation of, the local population,” Mugabe said, adding: “Surely, keeping decapitated heads as war trophies, in this day and age, in a national history museum, must rank among the highest forms of racist moral decadence, sadism and human insensitivity.”
These human remains ended up in European collections through a number of encounters involving warfare, Egyptian tomb raids, and are grisly reminders of ‘scientific’ racism and the creation of human zoos. This last such humiliating spectacle took place as recently as 1958, when people from Congo were put on display for a World Fair event in Brussels, Belgium.
“The nation is being informed that the archival documents associated with the remains were examined to verify their authenticity and integrity. The delegation was satisfied that there are indeed human remains of Zimbabwean origin in the United Kingdom as confirmed by the Natural History Museum and the Duckworth laboratory,” added Mutsvangwa.
She reiterated that despite both the Natural History Museum and the University of Cambridge willingness to collaborate on the repatriation of the human remains in their institutions, the government will spare no effort to ensure the repatriation of Zimbabwean ancestors.
