THE remains of Mbuya Nehanda, a heroine of the resistance against white colonial rule who will always be remembered for her last words: “Mapfupa angu achamuka” (My bones will rise) and Sekuru Kaguvi, together with 25 other skulls of First Chimurenga fighters, are set to be returned to Zimbabwe.

A technical team from the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe (NMMZ) is leaving for the UK this week to finalise the repatriation of the remains.

The remains of Mbuya Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi, hanged by British invading forces at the height of the country’s first war of resistance against white settlers in the 1890s, have been on display at the Westminster Abbey and the National History museums in London.

It is understood Mbuya Nehanda’s bones were taken to the UK in a sack and displayed in a museum as a trophy. 

“There are certain guidelines which need to be followed to repatriate the remains, for instance, to confirm their Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) if indeed they are of African ancestry,” said a source.

Addressing members of the press at the ZANU PF headquarters recently, Colgan Zendera, the reigning Chief Makoni, said plans to repatriate the remains of the 27 heroes and heroines of the First Chimurenga were at an advanced stage.

“After thorough research, we found out that there are about 27 heads that were taken and gifted to the British crown as war medals,” said Chief Makoni.

“We are very grateful that the repatriation process is now ending and very soon, we would have brought back the remains of our ancestors so that we can reunite their skulls with their roots, because they belong here.

“Many people might just think the skulls are not important but they are very important, and the white settlers knew that if they took just the head, then they would have disconnected the link between the body and the head and the person will not become a spirit medium.” 

In August 2015, the British Government acknowledged holding the remains of the heroes and heroines of the First Chimurenga. However, it has been reluctant to release them.

That same year the Zimbabwean Government assembled a team of experts to go on a similar mission, but it was aborted and no reasons were given.

Is it because of Britain’s long-standing policy not to relinquish ownership over its looted treasures? 

As the then British Prime Minister David Cameron said of Greece’s Elgin Marbles and India’s Koh-i-Noor diamond:

“No, I certainly don’t believe in ‘returnism’, as it were. I don’t think that is sensible.”

The British Museum has around 20 000 items in its human remains section, mainly taken from Africa as ‘war trophies’ after massacres and suppression of indigenous populations’ uprisings. 

And in 2017, after being pressured by Zimbabwe, the Natural History Museum of London submitted a report on its findings in relation to the identities of human remains of slain heroes and heroines of the First Chimurenga.

Several skulls at the London Museum were positively identified as having originated from Zimbabwe. 

The human remains include skulls of Chief Mashayamombe Chinengundu of Mhondoro, Chief Chingaira Makoni of Rusape, Chief Kadungure Mapondera, Chief Mutekedza Chiwashira and Chief Mashonganyika, among others.

These exhibitions of our heroes and heroines tell the tragic story of how locals were ruthlessly dispossessed of their land to make way for white settlement. 

They are evidence of how chiefs and their people were killed trying to protect their land from the colonisers.

Chief Chinengundu Mashayamombe was killed in action in 1897 and his head was decapitated in order to be presented to the Queen, it is believed. 

His body was paraded at impromptu victory parties that were thrown by Rhodesians. 

Another gallant son of the soil, Chief Chingaira Makoni, was killed by a firing squad and his head was also decapitated and taken to Westminster Abbey in London. 

His family travelled to Britain in 1988 in an attempt to repatriate his remains, but they were told to look for it in South Africa.

The steps the West took to show, not only their military superiority but the violent subjugation of African people, included taking the skulls and skeletons of deceased warriors, and transporting them to Europe for the purpose of study and exhibition in museums.

“In Berlin, there were two prominent scientific collectors, Rudolf Virchow and Felix von Luschan. Together they had thousands of human remains. When Virchow died and Luschan took over his collection he claimed to have the biggest anthropological collection in the world comprising of remains of about 10 000 to 15 000 individuals,” Christian Kopp told Vice. 

Kopp is the project co-ordinator for Berlin Postkolonial, an organisation that has been working on the restitution of African skeletal remains for over a decade. 

“Today there are still up to 8 000 bones in Berlin and maybe some few thousands in other German collections,” he said.

“Luschan’s private collection with some 4 000 to 5 000 skulls and skeletons was sold after his death to the American Natural History Museum (AMNH) where, we believe, they are still on display.” 

Last year, French President Emmanuel Macron talked about the need to return stolen African artefacts housed in European museums back to their countries of origin. 

Then the Savoy Report, created by academics Bénédicte Savoy from France and Felwine Sarr from Senegal, was released. 

The report detailed the logistics of the proposed restitution along with statistics on how much African work is actually (priced) in Europe. 

It is estimated that 90-95 percent of Africa’s cultural heritage is held outside Africa by major museums, with France alone having over 90 000 objects from sub-Saharan Africa in its national collections.

Just north of France, in Germany, several museums are in possession of other African treasures. 

Only these are not objects, but human skeletons.

In August 2018, Germany handed back about 25 human remains of the indigenous people killed during a genocide in colonial Namibia more than a century ago.

The skulls of some of the victims were sent to Germany where racial anthropologists studied them as part of an attempt to justify a theory about the racial superiority of Europeans.

The sad life of Saartjie Sara Baartman from South Africa is perhaps one of the most well-known examples of the European practice of treating African bodies and remains as products of, not only ‘research’ but, exhibition and amusement.

Baartman was a black woman who, for about five years, was exhibited in England, Ireland and France as a rarity; mostly because of the size of her buttocks.

When she died in 1815, her body was dissected by Georges Cuvier, who is ‘revered as the founder of paleontology’. 

Cuvier placed Baartman’s genitalia and brains in jars and put her skeleton on display at France’s Museu de L’homme (Museum of Man). 

It would remain on display until 1976. 

In 1994, the late South African President Nelson Mandela requested her remains be sent back to South Africa and the French Government took years to acquiesce. 

After having arrived in Europe in the early 1800s, Baartman’s remains were finally sent back to her homeland in 2002.

In 2017, descendants of Khoi and Nguni people in South Africa formed a coalition to demand the repatriation of their ancestors’ remains taken to Europe during colonisation. 

And in 2019, poet Lemn Sissay joined a coalition to repatriate the bones of Prince Alemayehu of Ethiopia, which had been in England for over a century.

In his novel Batouala, author Rene Maran wrote: “Civilisation, civilisation, pride of the Europeans, and charnel house of innocents… you build your kingdoms on corpses.” 

Currently, the Lempertz auction house in Germany, which has been around since 1845, has an ‘Asmat Ancestor Skull’ up for auction on their site. 

The Asmat are black people from New Guinea and the skull is marked as ‘Lot 52’. 

The going price is €3 000 to €5 000 (US$3 424 to US$5 707) and the winning bid seems to be €3 720 (US$4 245).

The barbarity of displaying human bones may seem simple and academic, but when you factor in race and the historical and contemporary politics of anti-blackness, nothing is ever that simple. 

For centuries, African bones have lain in boxes all across Europe, placed under microscopes or displayed in some attempt to better understand the role of humans through scientific endeavors. 

These collections of African remains are reminders of scientific racism and the creation of human zoos which took place as recently as 1958, when living people from the Congo were put on display for a world fair event.

They don’t express Africa’s history or culture, or offer any means of ‘cultural exchange or mutual understanding’, as the International Council of Museums suggests. 

They are parts of the legacy of anti-blackness, sadism and Eurocentrism.

Only at this moment when European countries risk being publicly shamed, have steps begun to be taken to unravel how repatriation is going to happen, how long it will take and whether it is even possible.

For now, however, Zimbabwe awaits the successful repatriation of the remains of Mbuya Nehanda and other heroes who were decapitated by the British and their heads taken to Britain as trophies for the Queen. 

Such callous, inhuman and barbaric behaviour by the same people who today preach the gospel of ‘human rights’ to Africans! 

Isn’t that hypocrisy at its worst?