For the first time, a French president is officially committed to the question of the restitution of objects of African heritage. A spectacular decision that takes its predecessors on the wrong foot.
African statuettes exhibited in a French museum
A sentence pronounced by Emmanuel Macron during his official speech in Burkina Faso will undoubtedly not go unnoticed on the African continent! The President of the Republic has indeed promised to make the restitution of African heritage preserved in French national collections a priority over the next five years! A bombshell, given the position held until then by France - and other Western nations - on museum works and their "inalienability".
In this speech delivered on November 28, 2017 at the university in the capital Ouagadougou in front of 800 students, Emmanuel Macron declared that he wanted "the conditions to be met for the "temporary" or "permanent" restitution of heritage african in africa (…) I cannot accept that a large part of the cultural heritage of several African countries is to be found in France. There are historical explanations for this, but there is no valid, lasting and unconditional justification, African heritage cannot only be in private collections and European museums. African heritage must be highlighted in Paris, but also in Dakar, Lagos, Cotonou, this will be one of my priorities. I want the conditions to be met within five years for the temporary or permanent restitution of African heritage in Africa,” he said. While specifying that everything must also be done, "so that there is security and that care is taken in Africa to protect these works .
In March 2017, before the presidential election of May 7, France refused to grant Benin's request for restitution of royal objects from Benin, namely "ceremonial seats, palace doors and anthropomorphic statues of this former French colony when it was still called Dahomey. The French authorities relying, as always, on the legislation in force:France indeed ratified in 1997 the UNESCO Convention of November 14, 1970, which makes museum collections inalienable, thus reaffirming the non-retroactivity transactions prior to that date. However, it is also the application of this law which has made it possible in certain cases to carry out retrocessions, as was the case for 5 objects returned to Egypt by the Louvre Museum in 2010:proof of a illegal acquisition could indeed have been made.
Some are already wondering what this "priority stated by Emmanuel Macron means for objects of African heritage kept in institutions such as the Musée du Quai Branly, in Paris, or the Musée d'Aquitaine in Bordeaux.
A thorny question for the great museums of the world
The question of restitutions is a thorny and complex subject, at the crossroads of law, politics and ethics, with which all the great museums of the world are confronted, whether it is the British Museum, in London, which is faced with the Greek request for the return of the Parthenon marbles, as well as that of Nigeria for the 15th century bronze heads of the rulers of Ifé, or even of the Neues Museum in Berlin, Germany, which sees itself claiming the bust of Nefertiti by Egypt. Each country being faced with its own history. These questions also pose the problem of the status of these major institutions which have a universal vocation. In December 2002, the Louvre and 19 of the world's leading museums signed a declaration proclaiming that "these institutions were not at the service of the inhabitants of a single nation, but of the citizens of each .
It prevents. On a case-by-case basis, solutions are sometimes found. In 2010, former President Nicolas Sarkozy authorized the return to South Korea, after their looting in the 19th century, of 297 manuscripts from the Korean royal archives, kept at the National Library of France (BNF), in the form of a "long-term loan , which had not failed to cause gnashing of teeth.
This is because he may be "from a generation that never knew Africa as a colonized continent “, what Emmanuel Macron specified on several occasions during his African trip, that the young French president speaks uninhibited on this subject. In the process, he also announced "that 2020 would be a Season of African cultures in France .