France will formalize the restitution of a historic saber in Senegal and in the coming months 26 heritage objects in Benin as part of its decision to return cultural works taken during colonization in Africa. The government examined on Wednesday the first bill allowing the transfer of cultural works to their country of origin, which President Emmanuel Macron had initiated in his speech in Ouagadougou, November 28, 2017, on a re-founding of the cultural partnership between the France and Africa.
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This restitution " corresponds to a very strong commitment made by the President of the Republic so that African youth have the opportunity to access their heritage, their history, in Africa, " explained government spokesman Gabriel Attal to the outcome of the Council of Ministers. It is " one of the essential issues for a new relationship of friendship between France and Africa ", according to him.
For this, the bill authorizes, " by a derogation limited to the essential principle of inalienability applicable to French public collections ", the transfer to Benin of the property of 26 objects looted during the sack of the palace of the kings of Abomey by French colonial troops in 1892. These totems and scepters, currently kept at the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris, will be exhibited in a public place in Benin.
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In Senegal, France formally returns a saber that the former French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe had symbolically presented last November to President Macky Sall. This weapon is historically significant since it belonged to El Hadj Oumar Tall, a warlord and Muslim scholar who conquered in the 19th century a huge territory straddling Senegal, Guinea and Mali, and fought against French colonial army. " In both cases, the bill provides for a maximum period of one year for the delivery, by the French authorities, of these works ", specifies the government, which did not indicate if new works were going to be returned to other countries like Ivory Coast.
Emmanuel Macron had announced these decisions at the end of 2018 on the basis of a report by the academics Bénédicte Savoy, from the Collège de France, and Felwine Sarr, from the University of Saint-Louis in Senegal, who identified 90,000 African works in French museums. .
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Their work has been challenged by other specialists and museums such as the Quai Branly, which has the largest collection of early arts. They were worried about the politicization of the debate and the arguments that all the works deposited in their homes since colonization have been dishonestly acquired or looted, and must be returned.
They favor the “ circulation ” of works between France and Africa, rather than restitutions, except when, as is the case for the statues of the Royal Palace of Abomey, the looting by French soldiers was flagrant.