Dr Sekai Nzenza on Wednesday
One time, during my first visit to England, I was invited to the Tate Gallery by an English family hosting me. It was my first visit to England. The Tate is a very old British gallery full of international modern and contemporary art. My hosts said I should come along and see an exhibition of African art. At that time, I had only just left the village, so my knowledge of the outside world, let alone of art, was limited. Everything I knew about the English had come from the missionary teachers and also from novels and magazines. I just wanted to be more like the English, to dress like them, eat like them, talk like them and simply look more like them.

My hair, too, was undergoing some serious straightening with creams and also with hot combs. The skin lightening creams were in abundance at the markets where Africans used to go in Brixton. But I did not use any because I had clearly worked out that any such attempts to lighten this dark skin of mine was going to achieve very little temporary results. So I resigned to remain black as long as I worked very hard towards being more English in everything I did.

It was, therefore, a little disconcerting, discouraging or confusing to be asked to come and see objects my host and hostess called African art. I walked around with them for a little while, observing artefacts from Benin, Nigeria, Ghana and other African countries. I recall passing briefly at the glass window written, “African art of the Shona people of Zimbabwe”. Inside there were baskets, clay pots, Iron Age pieces, gourds, grinding stones, tswanda, hari dzechinyakare, zvipadza zvakapera basa, chiduri nemutswi wacho nezvidende, mikombe, guyo, huyo nenyere.

I stood there as my hosts, a man, his wife and their teenage children, pointed to the objects from my homeland. I felt embarrassed by the artefacts. I cannot recall what comments I made. But I remember telling them that we do not use all that village stuff in the city.

I emphasised that if they were to visit my country, they would be surprised to see how civilised we were. We had electricity, fridges, stoves, beds, frying pans and many modern household goods including display cabinets, dinner sets and full cutlery. They looked at me and smiled, the way the English smile and politely change the subject.

I walked around a little more. When I got to the Congo section and saw strange looking masks, I was immediately reminded of traditional medicine men or n’anga nevaroyi. I decided it was time to leave the gallery. I went outside and waited for my kind hosts. There was no discussion of African art with me afterwards.

Years later, I look back to that Tate Gallery incident with some embarrassment. I have often recreated the conversation that I could have had with my hosts. I should have told them that Zimbabwe had many cultural heritage monuments. Then I ought to have told them the whole story about Great Zimbabwe as one of the most significant civilisations in the world.

But then again, when I was in primary school, I was taught that Great Zimbabwe was built by Phoenicians. I believed that to be true, because the whole idea of art was not known to me.

That day at the Tate Gallery, I would have been so proud to be Zimbabwean, if only I knew what I know now. I should have proudly sated the following: The first European to see the monuments was a German geologist called Carl Mauch, in 1871. Mauch quickly said Great Zimbabwe was not built by Africans. He wrote: “I do not think that I am far wrong if I suppose that the ruin on the hill is a copy of Solomon’s Temple on Mount Moriah and the building in the plain a copy of the palace where the Queen of Sheba lived during her visit to Solomon.”

In 1902, the British archaeologist Richard Hall arrived to carry out archaeological investigation at Great Zimbabwe National Monuments. Hall also believed that Great Zimbabwe and the art found there was of European origin. He wrote “The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia” (1902), and argued that the civilisation was built by “more civilised races” than the Africans. Hall eliminated archaeological evidence that referred to Great Zimbabwe as having been built by the Africans. In his book, Hall stated that his goal was to “remove the filth and decadence of Kaffir occupation”.

In 1905, British archaeologist David Randall-MacIver came and studied the mud dwellings within the stone enclosures. To the surprise of many people, Randall-Maclver was the first European researcher who wrote that the dwellings were “unquestionably African in every detail”. There was not much activity after this finding.

In 1929 Gertrude Caton-Thompson investigated the site and wrote “The Zimbabwe Culture: Ruins & Reactions” (1931). She said the ruins and the art found at Great Zimbabwe were of African origin. Her argument was based on available archaeological artefacts and oral tradition. Despite Caton-Thompson’s evidence, the colonial belief that Great Zimbabwe’s origin had nothing to do with the Africans went on for a very long time.

Years later, when I look back to where I have been, the London experience keeps cropping up in my memory and I link it to my current understanding of the meaning of art and how much of our heritage has been lost to through ignorance or through thefts.

I recently heard a story about the thefts of art in Zimbabwe. In 2006, six Zimbabwean artefacts were stolen from the National Gallery. Among the objects stolen were head rests believed to have strong spiritual powers to help a person to sleep. The National Gallery posted pictures of the missing pieces on the internet.

The artefacts were described by the National Gallery of Zimbabwe as follows: “Made from hardwood and painstakingly hand-carved with triangular designs and polished to a veneer finish, the head rest signified a personal and spiritual connection to the owner in the local Shona culture . . . The owner was traditionally buried with his individual headrest. The helmet-like face masks with facial markings and sharp, bared teeth were used at initiation and marriage rituals of both boys and girls in the regional Makonde tribal society.”

Six months later, the gallery received calls from law enforcement officials telling them that the stolen artefacts had been found in Poland. This led to an investigation and the arrest of a young Polish art dealer in Poland. The pieces were finally recovered in 2013.

The theft of treasures from Zimbabwe is nothing new. There are other stolen objects which include the Zimbabwe Birds, ethnographic objects, individual ritual objects, walking sticks and clubs. Over the years, I have since discovered that there is so much of our past that we must begin t0 revisit and appreciate.

Last weekend, I was back in the village collecting old clay pots, maduri, mitswi and various old calabashes. My cousin Piri thinks I am going through a state of madness. She says there is an ancestor spirit that is seeking to reclaim me and take me back to the past. “Chii chaizvo chakanaka pazvinhu zvakare kare?” she asked. What is so beautiful about objects from the past?

The art of our past or present is part of us, no matter how much we may want to forget or run away from it. The pieces of art lying around the villages, speak of history, creativity, knowledge and wisdom to be celebrated.

Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic

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