Peoples of Nso Kingdom, NW Region of the Cameroon in West Africa are not the only ones yearning for their stolen or extorted artifacts to be returned to them by Europeans unconditionally. Others have been there as in this citation: 'Africans and all those who believe in cultural cooperation based on mutual respect and understanding of different identities and views, must register their presence and interest in these manifestations; we must support the campaign for the return of all cultural objects stolen or illegally obtained from our continent [Africa, my clarification] which are in public or private possession in the U.S.A. or in Europe'.
The Right to have back our priceless Possessions and Ramifications
I have never seen an upright man who loses his valuables he had worked hard to obtain to hoodlums, sits complaisantly applauding them. My father once offered me a goat and it was stolen. After several years of frantic search, I discovered it in a neighbor’s homestead kilometers away. I raised an alarm and immediately asked for it to be returned to me. He objected that it was stolen by his father who was no longer extant. I brought witnesses and he advanced that it was a long time ago and that I should just let it go. Since my goat disappeared, I could not get a replacement. A substitute could not have satisfied me. Why? It had unique characteristics in its genes that were transmitted to its siblings that were highly demanded for their special marks. That made me economically rich, powerful and complaisant. I was not asking for a pound of flesh from near my neighbor’s heart like the character Shylock in our finest screenwriter William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice but for what his father stole. We all know that it is the right thing to do in a civilized society. I belayed the issue but that was not the end of the chapter. I told him that ‘the soil was to be our judge’ [a yhanna yen foo nsay].
It was not long before a chap from their homestead wanted to marry one of my nieces. The elders of our extended family ratiocinated and pulled down from the shelf the issue of the stolen goat as an impediment that halted the union of two persons in the sacrament of matrimony. It was painful and sad but that was the bylaw of the land being respected. At that juncture the illegal owner of my goat was ready to return with a replacement for the real goat had long been slaughtered. The elders told him to keep his loot. The marriage never took place. The suitor got concubines after concubines and was never ever happy. The spinster swore never to get married and died childless. This is the ramification of stealing. In what is at stake, we are delighted that our loot, Ngonso is alive and kicking though still in a prison cell.
What do we do when laws are wavered for powerful thieves and the poor are sent to the gallows? The time of the impoverished will come when least expected. Nso will not be in a position to retaliate or reject a suitor as in the above case, what the Germans did with our priceless cultural object unless it was a miracle. Was it a miracle that some Nso elements fought in the side of the Germans in the Kamerun (1884-1916) during the First World War?
Pablo Picasso was catapulted to fame by African ‘primitive’ art
Why are we bringing the above analogy? We are looking at possible scenarios that may transpire in our attempt to retrieve our stolen Ngonso statue that is rightfully ours that had been sitting in a Berlin museum for 99 years. Some wedges are being put on our trail to her when we have not even planned the day to send emissaries to bring her back from Germany to Nso Kingdom.
If Europeans of the colonial era considered Africans as semi-barbarians, primitive and come to loot from them to enrich themselves and after those supposed to be semi inferior or barbarians evolved to civilized creatures and asked for compensation, we do not think that it would be wrong. Our demand holds water and should be listened to and met. We are neither the first nor the last as pointed out below. We should have our ritual object and embodiment of our Kingdom back and there should be no excuse from Europeans and Americans that Africans do not even appreciate their works of art and so on. To start with ours are not works of art as will be seen. Furthermore, if you manufactured a jalopy and stored in your garage, does your neighbor seize it because it is not mobile or because you do not value it? It is still yours no matter whether it is inactive and under lock and key. If you take from a weak person something you have not purchase in kind or cash, you are considered as having pilfered. That in jurisprudence is a punishable crime.
Exonerate Looters!
Europeans and Americans have a different ways of artistic appreciation from untouched Africans. What they consider African art works are to a good number of Africans religious artifacts that are not even supposed to be displayed for people to appreciate. Some are media supposed to hold the souls of the departed as the case of Banjoun Kingdom in the West Region of Cameroon Republic. These are fetishes called mebvem in Nso Kingdom. Their aesthetic designs are not even religious embellishments. Some are left roughened and cannot be polished like oriental or other people's artworks as the Renaissance or Romans art sculptures. Others are not supposed to mimic real objects but are cartoon-like in appearance. The carvers have got their rationales. If polished, they are stripped of their spiritual or thaumaturgical values or are destined for the curious Westerners in curios’ shops. Pablo Picasso took the advantage of this, copied Africans traits of artifacts, incorporated then in his artworks and made huge fortunes. It should be noted that his works though pivoted on African designs were not primitive in the eyes of the beholders, Europeans but those of Africans were and hitherto. Ladislas Segy (1952), in his partial excitement with African sculptures lampooned them as he had mistakenly taken them as pieces of art works. He was not the first nor the last to castigate Africans. By looking down upon Africans as sub persons, it was possible for unthinkable things to be done to them in the past by aliens from Europe and the Middle East. That is a topic we have to relegate to footnotes of history for the sake of peace in the modern world. Others as Barbier-Mueller in Geneva, Switzerland were foresighted. The got them legitimately as from 1918 and do get plenty of money from tourists who pour in each day to see them. Some foreigners do not know where to draw the line between what they call artworks and serious religious or magical or demonological artifacts. That is a different story. However, it should be underscored that those who could handle these sacerdotal objects in their original homes are or were chief priests or priestesses who have been endowed with special powers through ritualistic ceremonies. To better understand what went on, readers are referred to Leviticus and books like the Numbers in the Old Testament though the Nso were not as barbaric but there are similarities in the selection and ordinations of who were to accept sacrificial animals and offer sacrifices to God.
A simulacrum of Ngonso the foundress of Nsoland, a replica of one of Bungo's King, Ndop Plain, the Grassfields (copyrighted).
Others are being returned
After examining these, I do not think multifarious restrictions or counter augments in favor of the looters would deter us from having our statue Ngonso, the Embodiment of our Kingdom back in the shortest due course of time. It should be returned unconditionally as it is being done by some contemporary Europeans who are admitting the damage done in the past to our culture and values. How many are returning the Jewish painting the Nazis looted? They are being tracked down from museums around the world and given back to their rightful owners.
On November 2010 two statues were returned to Rome from the USA when an Italian policeman spotted one of them on sale in the USA [www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-eruo-118000697]. On September 23, 2003 artifacts stolen from Native Americans in Albuquerque, New Mexico and illegally sold to an art gallery in Santa Fe were returned to their rightful owners. [www.fbi.gov/news/stores/2003/October]. Furthermore, the Egyptian authorities are demanding the return of stolen artifacts and art works from Europe and USA for the inauguration of the Grand Museum at Giza in 2013. [www.afrik-news.com/article16460.html]. There are many more positive stories. However, we have reasons to place our fear in fear. On June 18, 2006 a mask from Fang tribe, West Africa was sold at auction in Paris for $7.5 million US. Sardonically, Europeans never stopped calling African religious or magical artifacts as primitive art. They even build museum for them as one in Musee du Quai Branly, a new museum that was championed by President Jacques Chirac. With the souring prices and high demand by private collectors, of the so-called primitive art, Ngonso could have a conservative price on its head of $1.9 billion US. If we sell it for whatever price, we will be selling our heads and that is imponderable.
Others Europeans powers still want to clink on to their past misdeeds and some have had meetings in which they advanced that their museums could not return stolen properties to their rightful owners. In Nso’ there is an aphorism: “a thief’s excuse when caught red-handed stealing a goat was that he was removing wax from its ears.” The thief is ever smart and his homestead is ever surrounded by traps. Ask me how and you will see reasons advanced to clink on to your looted religious artifacts or art works:
A group of directors of some eighteen major museums in Europe and the United States of America, including the British Museum, London, the Louvre, Paris, Guggenheim Museum, New York, State Museums Berlin, Prado Museum, Madrid and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, signed on 10 December, 2002, a so-called 'Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums'. Assuming openly an extreme Eurocentric position, these directors arrogantly declared their museums 'Universal Museums' and postulated that "Over time, objects so acquired-whether by purchase, gift, or partage-have become part of the museums that have cared for them, and by extension part of the heritage of the nations which house them. (Okopu, 2003 from his paper: Benin exhibition: Some reflections on repatriation of stolen or illegally exported cultural goods). If a group of Russians or Americans land at Stonehenge and collect the boulders that have been there since time immemorial built by the prima occupantis of this part of England, would the British Government sit and watch it without any objection? Francis Drake looted in the old days, but we cannot allow him do that nowadays. The Spaniards whose galleons were looted would have taken him and Queen Elizabeth I to the World Court, The Hague and all the treasures returned to Spain. The Nso People or Ngonsonians are not asking for treasures to be returned from Germany but their religious work of art, the embodiment of their Kingdom. To reiterate, it is still extortion. If artifacts the Germans took from the then German West Africa (Namibia) could be returned, why not Ngonso?
You have to pray that Ngonso does not fall under this category. However there are unique cases.
Whoever told those curators that Africans and other third world inhabitants did not have museums in which to house their belongings? Their action is a manifestation of our differences in appreciation of art. In the true traditional set up religious artifacts are not gargoyles that European put to embellish the facades of the edifices and portals. They are used for worship and are not supposed to even be displayed. Therefore, they cannot be allowed to be arrogantly exposed for and on behalf of Africans in foreign lands without their permission. You will see that unless you go to Europe and North America you cannot see certain African religious artifacts Europeans naively call works of art. The curios carved in Oku, Babungo, Babanki, Bafang and in other places we have today for foreign tourists are not stricto senso African works of art. Most three dimensional volumetric works are just made to mimic religious artifacts. Their production are cash-driven and European inspired and not inherently African. Having made this point, I do not categorically rule out that there were mavericks as mural portraits by South African women and cave painting of the San (Bushmen) peoples in Namibia, Botswana and Zimbababwe (Monomatapa) and those of the Tuaregs in the Sahara caves, walls of gorges.
Before the advent of Europeans, African rarely sat down to carve a stone or wood to be pleasing to the eyes as Europeans and Asians would. [Africans did not cultivate flowers in their gardens for decoration as Westerners. If this was done, it was for medicinal and or magical purposes. In brief, aesthetic links to European appreciation of beauty was not innately Africans of our region]. Even if they were furniture, or architectural parts, they were to document history or had religious events or were for medicinal or magical values. We have examples of European motivated art works in Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia where Christian missionaries taught Africans to carve soap stones into abstract objects. Prior to that Monomatapans (Dzimbabweans-original spelling) Kingdom had carved soap stones for religious purposes.
To point out what money-driven art can do listen to this. In pursuit of cash some merchants of artifacts bury recently carved wooden pieces to accelerate their ages. After this phase they are exhumed or still allowed to be fed on by white ants so as to fetch good prices from those who do not know or cannot use radiocarbon dating instruments to determine their ages. That is all false and a form of corruption that must be discouraged. The truth is that no African with his right frame of mind would sell a fetish that is supposed to hold his parents’ souls to foreigners. It is for this reason that 4,000 pieces of art work looted by the British from the palace of Oba of Benin in 1897 during the so-called punitive expedition cannot be supported. They had historical and religious meanings attached to them by the Benin peoples. Those meant nothing to the British who got them with the view of selling them for a profit or out of curiosity. A true Nso man who sells a Shibvem (singular of artifact) commits a sacrilege and that is preposterous. By taking them away, the British invaders disrupted the Benin historical documentation and tradition. If an important visitor visited their kingdom, the incident was recorded in the form of copper casting of that visitor.
The British also looted with impunity homesteads in Kumasi in 1874 and anything that contained gold and ivory vanished. Even though they called Africans then primitive, sub-humans, homunculus, they did not consider their golden artifacts mediocre. They had no ground on which to stand to judge African ritualistic artifacts even hitherto. Some circumvent interpretation problems by employing African scholars in their museums to interpret for them. Others train their scholars to attempt to understand African arts. I will reiterate that in the traditional African and First Nation of American set up, there are virtually no art works. Artistic designs even on costumes have religious interpretations. Our Ngonso cannot be called a piece of art work as it is a spiritual incarnation of Nso traditional religion, Nsotology. What are essentially volumetric are media of prayers as SE Asian Buddha and what were known in the past as non-Christian believers’ things are not art works. Not even mumbo jumbos. They are not the same as the works of Hans Beller (1902-1975); Vincent Van Gogh; Gian Lorenzo Bernimi (1598-1680) or Michelangelo (1475-1564). To Westerners, African religious or historical documentation in forms of fetishes or figurines mebvem were artworks. To traditional Africans, they were embodiment of living things and not every one was supposed to even touch or see some of the pieces. If a woman saw some, in some societies it was the end of her life. Art in the West and other societies are to be appreciated. Therefore no true African will call those works of art that are not meant to be seen by the non-initiated, works of art. We do not see Western Christians calling the ghastly appearance of Christ on the crucifix a work of art. Do they? We would like to hear from them. Whether African pieces of arts are perceived as religious objects or what, they are not supposed be stolen.
Thou shall not steal is the 7th Commandment of God
There is no law of man that will go against the seventh Commandment of God that is known in all societies be they sophisticated and advanced or primitive… even in the animal realms. In some societies including some barbaric ones today, names withheld, if you steal you are automatically eliminated after pagan services on special days even to the glaring eyes of ombudsmen of the world. That is imponderable but it is a fact. The killers do not even care if you are a kleptomaniac that is suffering from obsessive stealing syndrome. In some Muslim communities your hands are amputated. In others, though not accepted in any civilized society, some doctors have been called to administer anesthetics so that the thief or thieves do not feel acute pains when their limbs are being severed. Some of you see the actual killing of thieves on daily basis in big cities like Yaounde and Douala, Lagos, Cairo, Mexico City and Chicago. That is decadence. No one likes to produce his or her commodity and come the following day to see it had been stolen, that is taken without compensation for the labor of its production or value….Love’s labor’s lost.
I will zigzag to illustrate what I am saying with a dreadful aspect of colonialism, coveting vast territories of less civilized persons by force or deception for your exploitation, which is the raison d’être or the root cause of this debate. After the abolition of slavery, another chapter was injected in the Europe economic bandwagon. It was colonialism. The colonialists came to use all sorts of excuses to colonize the supposed inferior races to impose their values on them for ease of their exploitation. The colonized rejected and were subjugated. In the course of this imposition internecine wars were fought. The Nso or ‘Nsonites’ in Western Africa did precisely that and were badly beaten in an open battle in 1906. If the Nso sent their Commanders, Aformi Gham and Bah, it was to defend themselves when they had been invaded by the Germans troops led by Hauptman Hans Glauning [interested readers can see the grave of this man killed by the Tivs on the Kamerun-British Nigerian border in 1907 at the Station in Bamenda] and his lieutenants with the tacit support of our then bête-noirs the Mum led by King Njoya, Bali, Douala and some mercenaries that were recruited from Liberia and Togoland.
Whatever the case, if you sit in you cocoon called house and someone comes to seize it from you, it is you right to fight and repulse him or her. If you do not, it will be interpreted that you are not normal or that you are a coward. Any invasion for whatever reason was wrong. That invasion was damaging and those who were responsible have all died but if they in the course of their chivalrous adventure stole and cause mayhem, it is right that we salvage from their children whatever they took or destroyed so long as we have tangible evidence that they looted and committed atrocities. That will not be vendetta. Did we invite them to come to our land and did we ever dream of ever invading any European nation state? No!!!!!!!
Youths of today dissociate themselves from their parents past deeds
The youths of today in Europe and North America are appalled at what their parents or great grand parents did to other peoples in the name of their economic aggrandizement to meet their gargantuan demands for commodities that bolstered their blooming industries. The Industrial Revolution triggered some of these. Today, European youths are less racist unlike their parents. We are not saying that there are no isolated cases of racism. There are. They do not buy even a modicum of colonialism for whatever price. Most, I have sounded are apologetic and do say that it was wrong to have colonized Africa or engaged in African slavery and slave trade no matter their conceived positive intentions. In the same vein, they are of the opinion that colonialism should not be glamorized in any way for whatever reason or reasons. All should endeavor to condemn and leave that macabre history chapter of man behind us. Similarly, they do not entertain the idea that their natural history museums in their continents should be enriched with our looted values and artifacts because they have good storage places and documentation. You are unclothed, unfed, poor, and un-sheltered. Are these good reasons for a wealthy European to come and adopt all your children and leave you alone in Africa? Why can’t he help you to improve your standard and those of your children while living in their natural home in Africa? Why do you believe that Ngonso the founder of Ngonsonia (Nso Kingdom) will be given a cozy home in Berlin when she was born in Africa? Who told the looters that she was not comfortable in her home, Nso, NW Region, the Cameroon, Western Africa? Therefore, if we ask for the wrongs of yesterday to be righted in our apparently liberated and upright world, we are not looking for confrontation but seeking for justice as advocated by the UNDP, UNESCO and ombudsmen in the world. If tomorrow the German Government returns lady Ngonso, it will certainly be a form of reconciliation without which we will keep on bearing them a grudge. There is no one in the Kom Kingdom a sister kingdom to Nso that was not thrilled with Afoakom, a similar status that was stollen and sold to some persons in the USA was returned unconditionally to Kom, the Cameroon. If they do not, then their children are not sincere with their disassociation from what their parents did to Africans and other in the name of implanting civilization or civilizing mission in the past. It should be stressed at this juncture that a crime is still a crime irrespective of the time when it was committed.
To ask for booty to be returned to the rightful owner is not retribution
If today one were to ask the Americans to compensate African Americans for the slave labor that they had gratis that buttressed their burgeoning capitalism (reparation), it should not be viewed as fomenting mayhem. The economic discrepancies of African Americans vis a vis Europeans Americans have got their roots in the slave trade and slavery in the USA. These were things done in the days of darkness and if there are avenues to compensate the victimized that have been reduced to the economic dregs of the world as a consequence, it would be right. It is not awry to state that it is wrong to table this before the United Nations Organization (UNO). So, it is the right thing for the Nsonites to ask for Ngounso to be returned and UNESCO will side with the people of Nso. I am not certain that the democratic and civilized Germans of today would ignore our plea or inveigle us.
Human Right and looted artworks
It was our human right to have our Ngonso and it is still our right to have it returned to us unconditionally. In an earlier allusion, in a true capitalist economy, you do not get goods without paying for them in return. If the reverse were true, capitalism would be ‘kleptomaniacism’. The one I know is not. A household that exclusively lives on charity does not last for long. How many of you are happy when you read in the Western media that we live in a country that is the most corrupt in the world? It is corrupt because people get commodities they have not worked for and that is not the best way to build a genuine economy. That is why others are advancing and we are declining. Did the government that rule us not started on the same footing with Malaysia? Malaysia is poised on being developed by 2015. I bet you we will not be able to even bulldoze the much-talk-about rugged and potholed Ring Road, the Mamfe-Kumba trunk A road, and the Muyuka-Ndian ever elusive highway.…The answer is subsume in the terrible exclusionary governance that masquerades as democracy. Is it because we are immune to that fact that we consider those who looted from us in the past as having done the right thing? Did they? This is not accepted for the general good of the world economy as such a state discourages incentive to work and produce. That is why the Westerns fought valiantly to get rid of communism for it was a deterrent to their interest and to the economic growth of the world at large.
In consequence, if Ngounso (Ngonso) was taken from us without compensation, it is obvious that we request it immediate return to us by the present German Government without a single cowrie missing from its body. Each cowrie represented each family in Nso at the time of its carving and if we out of naivety leave this to remain overseas for reasons some readers are advancing,{lack of resources to keep her, security and others] it will tantamount to cutting limbs of the Daughter of Nso the founder of our beloved Kingdom of Nso (Ngonso).
May we use this opportunity to implore all Nso lawyers, elites, business person, in fact Nso of all walks of life and the cultural ministry of the nation state in which Nso is grdugingly administered to support us in the retrieval of this holy object in Nsotology. Once more those who looted caused untold damage to the economy of Nso Kingdom, and bitter feelings that are rankling hitherto. The looters capitalized on their god-given intellect that was supposed to help us but they used it to suppress, oppress and loot from us (ivories, gold pieces, children who were sent to work for them in their plantations, women whom they turned into sex slaves and all these were totally wrong). This is the bitter truth that must be told.
On this note many will be wrong to suggest that our able historians and economists compute the total cost of destruction of our economy and pass the bill to the present German Government? Besides this priceless artifact of supreme importance in our cultural heritage, our palace was torched. What have we ever had in return? Not even a verbal apology. If today the Germans who were not even born are paying for the harm their parents caused to the Jews during the Second World War (1939-1945), why do we sit silently in acquiescence that we should not be compensated for our loses? If we submit to the past wrong, we are accepting the fact that we are inferior humans and deserve no better treatment as the Jews. Are we? Remember that they were shooting us and our children as birds in Ngongbaa Forest with the Maxim guns. Where were we off beam to deserve such maltreatment, humiliation, lost of irreplaceable lives that were heralded by the stealing of Ngonso? Again, returning to us will be a gesture of goodwill and a step towards reconciliation.
Ninety-nine 99 years have elapsed since our beloved Ngonso was snatched from our hands. It is too long to allow the embodiment of our Kingdom to be in the cold without being fed, clothed and be gazed each day in Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin. They have no clue of the pains in our hearts that had been festering for 99 years. Next year will make it a century since Lady Ngonso was kidnapped. The House, the cultural cults of Ngwerong, Ngiri, and Nso-Mtar must as a matter of expediency get a written statement from the German Government telling us unreservedly when they could return our Ngonso to us. If Europeans are returning today what their parents looted from Africa in the past why do you think that ours should be allowed to be languishing in Europe? Is it because we are not interested? Is it because we do not have feelings? I will like the House to raise their hands up if they were not thrilled when Afoakom earlier referred to was returned from the USA with pageantry and pomp to our sister kingdom of Kom?
Apathy
Finally, there are several ways we can partake in a crime inadvertently yet claim our innocence. We could shrug our shoulders and say that it did not concern us and that we were minding our business. I hear this everyday. This is what the English man calls apathy. If you see a man lying in a ditch after an accident and you just pass for you have pressing commitments to attend to and should not be bothered, that is apathy which contradicts the brotherhood of man. Apathy is killing our society, our world softly but surely. Before it is done away with, the right hand of one man will be cutting his left for having not cautioned him of the consequences when it was stealing a market woman’s wallet. Many of you sit in offices and see blatant corruption, yet you do not raise an alarm for fear of retribution yet you call yourselves believers, let us call it Christians or Muslims. If you are Christ’s follower you should deplore unflinchingly corruption as I am raising this alarm of past injustice, the thief of our priceless Ngonso. Will you be apathetic or side with us? Is Ngounso German or Nso (Ngonsonian) heritage?
Viban Viban NGO, PhD
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