South Africa on Tuesday (14 April) handed back to Zimbabwe ancestral human remains and a centuries-old stone carving of its sacred national emblem, the Zimbabwe bird.
The items were taken more than 100 years ago during the colonial era.
The restitution was part of a worldwide push for artefacts looted from African countries during the colonial era to be repatriated.
“When something sacred is taken from a people, a part of their story is taken with it,” South Africa’s Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie said in a statement on Monday.
“Returning these treasures is about restoring that story, restoring pride, and restoring dignity,” he added.
The handover took place at the Iziko South African Museum, with officials from both countries attending.
Eight coffins draped in the Zimbabwean flag stood at the event.
Little was known about the human remains except that they had been unethically exhumed for research, officials said.
Once back in Zimbabwe they would be further studied and returned to “where they belong,” Zimbabwean government representative Reverend Paul Damasane said.
A statue of the Zimbabwean national emblem
The soapstone carving of a Zimbabwe bird — also known as Chapungu — was the first of several looted from the stone ruins of the ancient complex of Great Zimbabwe built in the 11th to 13th centuries, officials said.
A British explorer had ripped it from its pedestal in the late 19th-century and sold it to British mining magnate Cecil John Rhodes, the prime minister of the Cape Colony between 1890 and 1896.
Nearly “140 years since the first one was taken and sold to Cecil John Rhodes, that very same statue […] is finally making its journey home,” South Africa’s culture ministry said.
The others that had been in South Africa were returned the year following the former British colony’s independence in 1980, officials said.
The original birds are around 33 centimetres in height and most were perched on stone columns more than a metre high.
They are the national emblem of Zimbabwe, depicted on banknotes, coins and the national flag. They are also sacred because of a belief that they carry a protective spirit.
