Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II has schooled Europeans and the world at large about the essence of the looted African artefacts that remain in their position despite desperate attempts by their bona fide owners to retrieve them.
Delivering a lecture at the British Museum in the United Kingdom on July 19, 2024, he stated that these artefacts, some of which date back to the formation of the now united empire, are a compendium of their soul.
He recognized that to the West, they are just inanimate creations of artistic value and therefore corrected the misconception in his submission using traditional concepts.
“When a chief goes to his village, as we traditionally describe his final journey in life, a stool is consecrated to memorialise his reign. He becomes a continuous spiritual presence in the affairs of the state and successors are required to swear an oath to continue with his good deeds.”
“Without the benefit of the alphabets during the epoch of the birth Asante union, the soul of the nation, our moral and spiritual values, the ethos of our being all found expression not in literature but in our artistic creation, in folklores, in music and our irresistible Kente cloth. Our kings were adorned in them as an expression of our leadership but the artisans were the conveyers of the philosophical underpinnings of our blossoming states.
“What this tells us is that for us, the artefacts we speak about are not just some inanimate creations of artistic value. They represent our soul. They represent the spirit of our ancestors, the authorities of our kings and the heroes of our past returning in triumph from the battlefield.”
The Asante Kingdom was a victim of loot in 1874 and subsequent wars with the British, having a huge chunk of silver, brass and golden artefacts stolen from the Palace of the Asantehene in Kumasi.
Some of the loots were sold in the open art and auction houses first in Cape Coast in the Gold Coast before they ended up in England within the first quarter of 1874.
The King has successfully secured 39 of these artefacts from the Fowler Museum in the United States, the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum in the UK.
The King is still pushing for more to be handed over.
In his delivery, he called for plausible conversation into the demand for restitution by African countries and all victims who suffered a similar fate to the Asantes.
“It’s also an important objective for us given the growing bonds between our peoples to find the pathway through the locked jam in the global conversation about the restitution of cultural artefacts extracted from various centres in unethical circumstances during the epoch of colonial enterprise and to demonstrate that with sincerity, mutual trust and goodwill, the world can overcome any impediment to the rational revolution of all of the conflicting goals.”
Source: Manhyia Palace
