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Accepted Paper:
Afterlives of restitution in Namibia
Larissa Förster
(Humboldt Universität)
Goodman Gwasira
(University of Namibia)
The paper focusses on the restitution debate in Namibia with its many different cases, motivations and outcomes - in particular in the case of artefacts and ancestral remains returned from Germany. It seeks to understand the different stakeholders' views of the future of restituted objects/subjects.
Paper long abstract:
Namibia is among the few African countries that have seen a series of restitutions over the past three decades, in particular from Germany (and Finland). Among the returned entities were documents later accredited the status of UNESCO Document Heritage (the letter copy books of anticolonial resistance fighter Hendrik Witbooi), books (psalm books and bibles), artefacts (the stone cross of Cape Cross, a power stone from the Kwanyama Kingdom, a ‚sample‘ of 23 historic artefacts from different cultural communities etc). In addition the mortal remains of 82 Namibian individuals whose corpses had been abducted under German colonial rule were repatriated in 2011, 2014, 2018. The paper focuses on the long durée of the restitution debate in Namibia, in particular on the complexity of stakeholder discussions and negotiations on the destination of family heirlooms, of artefacts meanwhile considered national heritage as well as on the final resting place of ancestral remains. It asks how the ‚new lives‘ of repatriated entities were imagined before the returns, as well as how they were enacted after - by politicians, activists and artists, heritage professionals and Namibian citizens in general. What models have emerged from these negotations?