A decision by curators will allow indigenous people to claim back body parts of ancestors which have been kept at museums, writes Eddie Koch
A CONFERENCE of South African museum curators last week resolved to back demands for the body parts of a Khoisan woman whose pickled brains and genitalia are being stored in a back room of the Museum of Man in Paris.
The conference also agreed to negotiate a system that will ensure large collections of human skeletons from indigenous people now in South African museums – many of them collected during colonial wars of conquest – be returned into the custody of their descendants.
The bold move, which will push this group of academics into negotiations with local organisations representing Khoisan people and Griqua communities who have Khoisan ancestry, opens exciting new research methods for archaeologists and anthropologists.
Khoisan hunter-gatherers were the first inhabitants of Southern Africa during the Stone Age and were relentlessly persecuted by white colonialists and also the majority African population in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Griqua National Council and the Khoisan Representative Council have asked President Nelson Mandela to back their demands for the Paris Museum to return the body parts of Baartman, a Khoisan woman who was taken to England and France so that she could be exhibited there as a circus freak in the early nineteenth century.
South Africa’s Arts and Culture Ministry has taken up the challenge and opened negotiations with the French embassy in Pretoria in an effort to circumvent French law which prevents the government in Paris from interfering with the autonomy of museums that are notorious for refusing to return the heritage of developing countries.
But the issue has kick-started a domestic controversy as indigenous peoples’ organisations discover that large collections of body parts are being kept at local universities and research organisations.
Martin Engelbrecht, researcher for the Khoisan Representative Council, says the various clans and communites who have descended from the original Khoisan population will never know peace until their ancestors bones have been returned and treated with dignity.
At the South African Museums Association (Sama) annual meeting in Kimberley last week, curators responded by adopting a formal resolution – which will shortly be forwarded to the government – expressing their support for the return of Baartman’s remains.
They also recognised the sensitivity of some of their own collections and supported a suggestion that scientists gather in Cape Town this weekend to begin discussing formal policy guidelines about how to meet demands for restitution in a sensitive way.
And, to show their seriousness, they decided to set up a task group whose job it will be to “develop a comprehensive policy on the delineation and restitution of sacred and sensitive material”. Sama also asked the government to fund a research program to document and make public an inventory of all human remains in local and overseas institutions.
Graham Avery, head of the human sciences division at the South African Museum, points out there is vast potential for museums and community groups to collaborate around the restitution and management of remains.
The museum has arranged a workshop in Cape Town this weekend to “develop a professional framework, for South African circumstances, within which the heritage sector can negotiate more widely on issues of sensitive collections and foster an atmosphere for open, constructive and intercultural cooperation”.
Khoisan and Griqua groups have also expressed a readiness to seek compromises between their needs and the interests of scientists. “We know we are only a community if we can get enough knowledge about what happened to our people… We could be open to the suggestion that we put the bones back in the ground but in a way that scientists can still get access,” says Engelbrecht.
“When it comes around to researching and delving into the past we support that,” adds Mansell Upham, an advocate who represents the Griqua National Council. “To hegemonise the remains or hijack them would prevent people gaining from an understanding of the past and would be self-defeating.”
@ Domestic in dispute with Ranchod
Rehana Rossouw
DEPUTY Speaker and South Africa’s ambassador designate to Australia, Dr Bhadra Ranchod, has been accused of exploiting and unfairly dismissing his domestic worker.
Ranchod vehemently denied this claim by the South African Domestic Workers Union (Sadwu), which is representing his former employee, Cynthia Maqaqa, of Khayelitsha.
The union claims Maqaqa was fired with immediate effect in February after she insisted on taking a lunch break at 1pm. She admitted banging her fist on a table when confronting Vibha Ranchod about her break.
She said Dr Ranchod had agreed she could take her lunch break at 1pm, but his wife insisted she continue working until 3pm.
Maqaqa was a live-in domestic worker at the Ranchod’s Rondebosch flat in Cape Town. She was first employed by them in October 1994, dismissed and then re-employed in November 1995.
She claimed that when she was fired in February, she was not given notice, leave or overtime pay. Sadwu sent a letter to Mrs Ranchod claiming R700 notice pay, R130 leave pay and R11 149 in overtime pay. The overtime amounts to 2 368 hours.
Union organiser Michael Sedgewick said Maqaqa worked from about 6.45am to 11pm on weekdays and 7am to 4pm on Saturdays, working an average of 80 hours a week.
The Basic Conditions of Employment Act stipulates that domestic workers should not be expected to work more than five hours continuously or more than three hours overtime daily.
Sedgewick said he sent a letter to Ranchod on March 4, demanding settlement of Maqaqa’s claim. He met Mrs Ranchod and her lawyers last month, but failed to resolve the dispute.
Ranchod said this week his wife was Maqaqa’s employer, but that he was prepared to settle the matter as soon as Sadwu provided him with the exact amount owing to her.
“My wife is very upset about all of this. Cynthia was part of our family, we treated her like one of us. For the whole of December we gave her leave because my wife was away,” he said.
“We have asked the union to specify whatever they think is owed by us. We have already given them an undertaking to pay what is due, yet the union can’t come up with the exact amount.”
However, the Mail & Guardian has a letter from Sadwu dated March 4 which stipulates Maqaqa’s claim. A subsequent letter sent to the union by Ranchod’s lawyer refers to that letter in the very first line.