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Strengthening African-European Connections. Sharing Past and Future

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Strengthening African-European Connections. Sharing Past and Future PROCEEDINGS / ACTES KOEN VLASSENROOT AND COLIN HENDRICKX (EDS) ONLINE SERIES ‘Documents on Social Sciences and Humanities’ Sharing Past and Future PROCEEDINGS / ACTES KOEN VLASSENROOT AND COLIN HENDRICKX (EDS) Publication under the direction of Isabelle Gérard (RMCA) Revision and proofreading: Colin Hendrickx, Emily Divinagracia (RMCA), Benoit Albinovanus (RMCA) and Clarisse Buydens (RMCA) Layout: Marie Wynants (achttien.eu) ISBN: 978-9-4926-6975-9 Legal Deposit: D/2021/0254/04 © Royal Museum for Central Africa, 2021 13, Leuvensesteenweg 3080 Tervuren, Belgium www.africamuseum.be Published online: https://www.africamuseum.be/en/research/discover/publications/open-access This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) Printed copies are available at the AfricaShop (Tervuren) and at the Publications Service, Royal Museum for Central Africa. Information about this publication: Publications Service, Royal Museum for Central Africa, 13 Leuvensesteenweg, 3080 Tervuren (Belgium) [email protected] Contents / Sommaire 7 15 19 Introduction Opening speech Une méthode de Colin Hendrickx and Guido Gryseels partage du passé Koen Vlassenroot Jean-François Bayart 29 35 43 L’UNESCO et la question du Partager le passé et l’avenir : L’Europe : un long passé devant retour et de la restitution des renforcer les liens entre nous, ou bien un futur sans biens culturels l’Afrique et l’Europe cesse renouvelé? Lazare Eloundou Assomo Abdoul Latif Coulibaly Margarida Calafate Ribeiro 3 Strengthening African-European Connections: Sharing Past and Future 51 55 67 Aux sources du Accessing archives – Accessing archives – nationalisme congolais Belgium Shared responsibilities Bob Kabamba Karel Velle Ellen Ndeshi Namhila 81 93 107 Congo history – CONTESTATIONS How to strengthen African Congo protest POLITIQUES EN RDC scholarly expertise Herbert F. Weiss Hier, c’était le Blanc qui me Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja faisait peur, aujourd’hui, c’est le président Jean Omasombo Tshonda 113 119 125 L’artivisme comme pouvoir Renforcer le lien entre La gestion du patrimoine de création et de résilience l’Afrique et l’Europe africain en Europe Gia Abrassart Ganza Buroko Hamady Bocoum 4 Contents / Sommaire 129 137 143 Dealing with claims for Introductory remarks Connecting societies and Nazi-looted art and to the panel exploring sustainable forms of colonial objects The Hon. Alexander De Croo (cooperative) development Jos van Beurden Bogdan Vanden Berghe 149 155 163 L’avenir empoisonné des Refashioning futures: Coopération : relations Afrique-Europe renewing Africa-Europe oser le nécessaire équilibre Fred Bauma engagement Smockey Bombara Yusuf Serunkuma Kajura 167 173 Partager le passé, Retranscription de l’allocution connexion dans le futur du ministre Didier Reynders en Raconteuse d’histoires clôture de la conférence An Ansoms 5 Introduction Colin Hendrickx and Koen Vlassenroot African-European connections today are at a crossroads, caused by several interlinked developments. A first and prominent example is the increasingly amplified call for the restitution of African cultural objects, oftentimes acquired by European museums during colonial times under diverse circumstances ranging from legitimate purchase to outright looting. On 28 November 2017, to an audience of Burkinabe students We are conscious at the Université Ouaga 1 Professeur Ki-Zerbo, French of the need to president Emmanuel Macron declared1 that African reflect on how to cultural heritage should not only be showcased in Paris, revise our reading but also in Dakar, Lagos, and Cotonou. In a similar of the past and vein, he expressed his wish that conditions be met for temporary or definitive restitution of African cultural strengthen future heritage to Africa within five years. The president African-European followed up on his declaration by commissioning a connections. report on the restitution of African cultural heritage, which was submitted by authors Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy on 23 November 2018. Although some observers expressed their discontent at the slow implementation of its provisions, the report irreversibly legitimised pressing calls for restitution against long-standing opposition. Another momentous and unfolding development in the relations between both continents is given voice by the decolonisation movement in academia and society. Names of streets and buildings reminding passers-by of controversial colonials are called into question, with voices demanding increased attention 1 https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2017/11/29/le-discours-de-ouagadougou-d-emmanuel- macron_5222245_3212.html 7 Strengthening African-European Connections: Sharing Past and Future to African heroes of colonial resistance in the public sphere gaining momentum. Statues including the ones of Leopold II in Brussels, Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town, and many others, are increasingly experienced as covering a violent history of colonial violence and white supremacy. And finally, movements such as Black Lives Matter in Europe have pointed at the direct connection between colonialism and racism. Not only did thousands of people rally in the streets of Brussels, London or Paris to express their support for the protests following the killing by policemen of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, but also to confront systemic forms of racism at home. Conscious of the need to reflect on how to revise our reading of the past and strengthen future African-European connections , the Royal Museum for Central Africa and Egmont–Royal Institute for International Relations organised a conference titled ‘Sharing Past and Future: Strengthening African- European Connections’. Over 50 international speakers shared their thoughts, critiques and views during a three-day conference held at the Royal Museum for Central Africa and the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels from 17 to 19 September 2018. Held prior to the reopening of the AfricaMuseum (after a five-year reorientation and renovation period), the conference offered a forum for African and European academics, activists, artists, politicians and other stakeholders to critically reflect on how Africans and Europeans could cooperate in a shared and sustainable way in the future. In his introduction to the conference, Guido Gryseels, Director General of the AfricaMuseum, emphasised that today, ‘we take distance from colonialism as a system of governance as it is a system which is based on military occupation, exploitation and imposition of white superiority, even racism. We distinguish colonialism as a system from the valuable contributions of individuals who often worked in the colony with great idealism and devotion. We try to decolonise the museum, but not only by providing a much more critical view of the colonial past, but more in general how we look, deal and work with Africa.’ Attitudes towards the relations between Africa and Europe from the past, present, and future do not necessarily correspond to one another and today are the subject of an oft-heated debate both in Europe and Africa. The starting point of the conference was the acknowledgement of a shared past and (the need for a) deep-seated mutual respect. The increased attention to decolonisation of the minds, of academia, of the public sphere, has resulted in some epistemological confusion. Through dialogue and the provision of sometimes opposed viewpoints on these themes, the conference tried to flesh out the various components of the decolonisation debate and avoid the pitfall of oversimplification. In his intervention, David Van Reybrouck advocated thinking beyond Western exceptionalism and the often emotional tone of the debate. As he argued, there is a need to zoom out of binary schemes, both in 8 Colin Hendrickx and Koen Vlassenroot | Introduction the past and in the present, in order to go beyond a one-dimensional narrative of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’. Politics of memory, as well as politics of forgetting, are pervasive in current thinking about African-European connections. The shared past begs the question of the desirability of emotions in the debate of future connections. But how then, should the colonial past be publicly memorialized and what is needed to process some of its still-controversial parts? Should we, as Smockey argued, gain the courage to divorce the imbalanced Afro-European couple in order to reconstruct a whole new relationship, based on a more equal footing, or should we revise our language from ‘decolonisation’ to ‘refashioning futures’, as Yusuf Serunkuma noted? *** The conference wanted to facilitate a dialogue around a number of critical issues at stake today. Interventions and contributions to the conference centered around three main themes: the shared African-European past, African heritage in Europe and the future of African-European relations. The over 200 participants looked at how relations between African and European societies can be reinforced; how new modes of cooperation can offer possibilities for a sustainable development and provide an answer to new (global) challenges; how an enhanced unlocking The conference of historical archives could lead to a memory which, no wanted to facilitate matter how far away or how painful, keeps on being a dialogue around shared with one another, but also how history could a number of critical be written from different perspectives and on a more issues at stake today. equal footing; how the involvement from contemporary Interventions and artists
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