Yav Katshung Joseph argues that as truth commissions multiply around the world it is important to look at their relationship to prosecutions and justice in an immediate and historical sense. Are TRC’s designed to generate more truth, more justice, reparations, and genuine institutional reform? Or are they designed to undermine the State’s and society’s legal, ethical and political obligations to their people? [Pambazuka]
It seems, Kwame Opoku argues, as if the colonial past of many European museums will keep haunting them for a considerable time and in the foreseeable future as they try to come to grips with the implications of the colonial enterprise for the activities of museums. Read the rest of this entry »
When European ethnologists deny the intimate relationship of Ethnology/Anthropology and colonialism or assert that they tried to restrain colonialism or that their role was insignificant, one has ample evidence to doubt the veracity of such assertions. The evidence of the mutual benefit for both is too obvious for anyone to seriously doubt that the ethnologist profited immensely from the colonial situation. [Full Text Article, pdf]
In his interview of January 27, 2008 with Richard Lacayo, “A Talk With: James Cuno”, Cuno, Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, makes many controversial statements. In the following, Kwame Opoku comments on a few of these points. Read the rest of this entry »
It is simply amazing how Eurocentric and selfish many of the arguments of the defenders of plunder and stealing of other people’s cultural property are. The opponents of restitution seem completely oblivious of the interests of countries trying to secure the return of their cultural objects that have been taken away by force or through dubious means. Read the rest of this entry »
Kwame Opoku in this article analyses the the vocabulary and metaphors of war which others use as their daily vocabulary for communication on many matters, including issues related to culture, and poses the question whether Western commentators are willing and able to make the paradigmatic change required to fundamentally change the West’s relations to Africa. Read the rest of this entry »
On 20 January, 1973 Amilcar Cabral was kidnapped in Guinea-Conakry and shot by an assassin in the service of the Portuguese secret police, PIDE. In this article, Kwame Opoku pays tribute to Cabral, who was a symbol of a new leadership emerging on the continent. Read the rest of this entry »
Kwame Opoku argues for the restitution of stolen cultural and religious objects from Africa. He states: “The African demand for the return of the stolen cultural objects will not disappear for many of these objects are expressions of the deepest feelings of a way of life, an understanding of the universe and religious expressions.” [Full Text Article, pdf]
Speech presented by Rosa Amelia PLUMELLE-URIBE at the AfricaAvenir Dialogue Forum in Berlin, June 14, 2006. This article has already appeared in >> french and >> german on www.africavenir.org. [The Voice]
Issa Shivji tackles the history of the development discourse in Africa, discussing its changing meanings from the colonial period to post-independence rule and the onset of structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s – Africa’s lost decade. The new development discourse of neo-liberalism (otherwise known as globalization) continues historical forms of dispossession, Shivji notes. [Pambazuka]