Muthoni Thangwa

Tag: news

  • The Museum Scandal Nobody Wants to Talk About!

    How Museums Launder Looted Heritage and Get Away With It

    The New York Times recently carried the headline: “Met Returns Buddhist Painting Taken During the Korean War.” It sounds noble at first glance. It isn’t. The painting, stolen from a South Korean temple, was only returned after quietly sitting in the Met’s collection since 2007. That temple, at the time the piece “went missing,” was under the control of the United States Army.

    This isn’t restitution; it’s housekeeping. A museum caught with an object it should never have touched in the first place, now performing moral theatre because the evidence is finally too loud to ignore.

    The framing of the headline is twisted on multiple levels. The language alone reveals the rot. Met might be anybody, except one of the world’s finest art museums. It quietly normalizes a neo-colonial worldview where Western museums remain the unquestioned custodians of other people’s heritage. Institutions in Europe and America are still practicing colonialism, unapologetic and ongoing, where the institution is protected at all costs, even when the objects inside were acquired through violence, coercion, or outright theft.

    The media, instead of interrogating this, often reinforces it. When looted objects appear in Western museums, headlines say they were “taken” or “went missing”: passive, harmless verbs that wash the blood off the story. But when those same museums lose objects, as the Louvre did recently, the wording changes instantly. Suddenly the objects are “stolen.” Theft is only theft when it inconveniences the powerful.

    The Korean War ended in 1953. That is not ancient history. By then, Interpol had already existed for nearly thirty years, loudly pledging to protect cultural institutions from theft. What it never pledged, then or now, was to hold museums accountable when they were the ones benefiting from those thefts.

    This is how museums continue to enjoy a strange low vibration kind of ethical exceptionalism. They insist on operating under “high ethical standards,” yet quietly exempt themselves from those same standards when it comes to acquiring or keeping looted objects. And for decades, they have fueled the illicit trade directly. Every time a museum pays a staggering sum for a questionable piece, it rewards the thieves, incentivizes fresh looting, and strengthens the criminal networks behind it. These transactions aren’t neutral; they are the financial engine and the immoral agency that keeps stolen heritage circulating through the global market with the veneer of legitimacy.

    Museums rarely “discover” that an object is stolen through their own provenance research. That is a myth they like to tell. In reality, they are usually caught. It happens when scholars, curators, or experts walk through an exhibition and immediately recognize a piece that should never have left its homeland. Only then do museums suddenly “offer” to return it; framing the act as generosity rather than compliance. By that point, the damage is done. The looter has already been paid, the illicit network has already profited, and the museum has already enjoyed years of prestige from displaying the object under its protective institutional umbrella. Restitution becomes a PR exercise, not an ethical stance.

    In the debate on repatriation, one of the fiercest forms of resistance has always been around reparations. Not the philosophical kind; the practical kind. Communities whose heritage was stolen are expected to receive their objects back quietly and gratefully, even though the theft deprived them of generations of cultural, spiritual, and economic value. And when museums finally return these objects, they rarely come with restoration budgets, conservation funds, or even basic support. Nothing to repair the harm. Nothing to acknowledge the decades, sometimes centuries, of damage. The institution that was caught handling stolen goods simply hands back the item, untouched, unfunded, and unaccounted for.

    They fail or refuse, to disclose where it was bought, from whom, or through what chain of transactions. Every step in the chain of thieves is trackable, yet the museum treats it as irrelevant, as if a simple handback absolves them of all responsibility. And all the while, the authorities remain silent, letting the system operate unchecked.

    The most disturbing part is that these are not isolated incidents. They are routine. Museums like the Metropolitan are repeatedly caught with looted objects, and each time it is framed as an unfortunate oversight rather than a systemic failure. But let’s be honest: once should be enough. A single proven case of handling stolen heritage should trigger a complete audit, accountability measures, and structural reform. Instead, the pattern continues; quiet acquisitions, louder scandals, and no meaningful consequences. The repetition isn’t accidental; it’s the system working exactly as it was designed.

    What we are dealing with is not a series of unfortunate mistakes. It is an ecosystem built on entitlement, denial, and the steady laundering of other people’s histories. Western museums have spent decades positioning themselves as guardians of the world’s culture while quietly benefiting from the very violence, chaos, and colonial extraction they claim to condemn. Returning a few objects under pressure does not absolve them. Offering apologies without accountability does not repair the harm. And repatriation without restitution is simply another way of maintaining control.

    If museums are sincere about ethics, then the standard is simple: full transparency, full audits, full cooperation, and full compensation. Anything less is performance. The world is no longer fooled by polished statements and symbolic gestures. Communities know what was taken, how it was taken, and what that loss has cost them. The question now is whether these institutions are finally willing to confront their own history, or whether they will continue to hide behind the same tired narratives while the truth keeps surfacing, object by object; scandal by scandal.

    The era of unchallenged ethical exceptionalism is ending. It is time for museums to decide whether they will evolve, or be exposed, repeatedly, by the very history they tried to bury.

  • Beyond coloured paper: African Leaders are Breaking Old Chains

    A new chapter in post-colonial history – Africa is challenging colonial economies

    Africa continues to navigate a contradictory and often very conflicted post-colonial landscape. Decades after independence, the continent still finds itself entangled in structures and systems that echo colonial control.

    There is a need to decolonise most of our inherited systems, from our economies to heritage institutions, our belief systems to our ways of worship. Africa’s economies are shaped by external interests, our heritage institutions curated through borrowed lenses, and even our belief systems and ways of worship reconfigured to mirror worlds not our own.

    The result is a profound disorientation. So many distortions of history exist that many Africans can no longer tell what the true African story is. Our past has been fragmented, rewritten, and often silenced, leaving us with borrowed narratives that fail to capture who we are.

    I was first introduced to the uncomfortable but necessary idea that charities in Africa often perpetuate poverty rhetoric and reinforce dependency on the West through the powerful words of Mallence Bart-Williams. She reminded us that the story of Africa is not simply one of need and lack, but of abundance, resilience, and agency. Yet, for as long as we accept externally imposed definitions of who we are, we risk being trapped in cycles of dependency, distortion and extortion.

    The first time I listened to a TED Talk by Mallence Bart-Williams, I was overwhelmed by conflicting emotions—anger, frustration, even a trace of ridicule. It was difficult to tell which feeling outweighed the others.

    On that podcast, Mallence begins by proudly declaring that she comes from the most beautiful continent in the world, and on this point, I agree with her, fully and without hesitation. She is from Sierra Leone, a country endowed with fertile lands that produce coffee, cocoa, fruits, and vegetables, alongside exquisite timber such as mahogany and teak.

    Sierra Leone, like many other African countries, is also rich in natural resources: gold, diamonds, petroleum reserves, and over 20 other precious minerals. It holds the largest iron ore deposits in Africa, and the third-largest in the world. These resources are not just statistics; they are the very backbone of global industry and modern living. The West depends on Africa’s wealth to power aeroplanes, manufacture cell phones and computers, and adorn itself with the symbols of status and power – gold and diamonds.

    She asks the multi-million-dollar question: Why is it that African currencies are worth only a fraction of Western currencies, when it is Africa that holds the gold reserves?

    The dependency is not what we have been told. Africa does not depend on the West: the West depends on Africa. This imbalance is maintained by destabilizing Africa’s richest nations and masking the truth through massive PR campaigns. These campaigns, often fronted by so-called charitable organisations, push the narrative that Africans are starving and dying, at war with each other and helplessly in need of saving.

    Meanwhile, Africa continues to exchange her vast resources, gold, diamonds, and more, for coloured paper. But what if Africa sold her resources at true world market prices, in a market where the producer sets the rules, as is customary in world markets? What would happen to Western economies that have been built on a post-colonial system that is deeply anchored in ne0-colonialism?

    To reclaim Africa’s story, the continent must be intentional about unlearning what it has been fed and relearning our histories from within. This means amplifying African voices, interrogating the ways our institutions are structured, and critically re-examining the frameworks: economic, cultural, and spiritual, that govern our daily lives.

    A new brand of leadership in West African countries has started re-writing the African narrative. In 2023, Burkina Faso, under President Ibrahim Traoré, terminated its military agreement with France and demanded the withdrawal of French troops, asserting sovereignty in both defense and monetary affairs. Shortly after, Niger’s military government ordered French forces to leave, including those guarding strategic uranium mines that have long fueled France’s nuclear energy industry while contributing little to Niger’s own development. Chad, too, announced in 2024 that it would not renew defense accords that kept French troops stationed on its soil.

    Many other West African nations have begun taking strong stands against lingering colonial economic ties to France. Under the CFA Franc system, 14 countries have been required to deposit a large share of their foreign reserves into French-controlled accounts, in colonial debt repayment systems that defy all logic, effectively subsidising French economic stability.

    There are those who will argue that these events: the withdrawal of French troops, the rejection of colonial debt arrangements, and the pushback against the CFA franc, are not directly related to France’s current economic woes. But the fact remains: time is re-writing the African narrative. A new generation of leaders is emerging, unafraid to confront the old order and determined to reclaim sovereignty over their nations’ resources, economies, and identities. Their interventions mark not just a political shift, but a historical turning point for Africa. This is starting to look like decolonization.

  • Who Owns the City Centre?: Restoring Safety in the Heart of Nairobi

    Reclaiming security for the city

    There was a time when I recall Nairobi’s city centre feeling truly safe. Kenyans went about their business with the usual wariness that comes with any big city. The public operated relatively freely, accepting minor risks as part of the urban vibe and drill of life.

    That uneasy balance has now been dramatically altered by reports of gangs of youth and street families taking over the streets, even in broad daylight. In just the past week, several Kenyans have shared disturbing accounts of robberies in the Nairobi Central Business District, some brazenly carried out in broad daylight, particularly over the weekends. Knife-wielding goons and teenage gangs carrying human waste are now threatening the peace of commuters, shoppers, and visitors alike.

    What was once background noise in the city’s rhythm has become a loud warning alarm. A secure city is measured by how well it protects its people. Nairobi is rapidly losing its standard, and it is doing so quickly. Building security and freedom for city users takes a long time, but that confidence can be eroded in a few incidents.

    One of the biggest disadvantages of insecurity in the city for me is the constant fear it creates every time one has an errand to run. Walking around clutching your bag, often having to empty it to a bare minimum, is a stress-filled experience. A standard woman’s bag has many things that may never be used, but on the day one leaves them behind is the day we need them.

    The consequences are wide-reaching. Residents live with constant anxiety and they restrict their movement. Businesses lose customers as people avoid certain streets or those businesses close early for safety. Tourists and investors, already cautious, will start to see Nairobi as high-risk, damaging both the economy and the city’s reputation and image.

    One of the hallmarks of a great city is its ability to protect people; when that is lost, everything else, commerce, culture, and community, begins to crumble. Sadly, Nairobi is sliding down this path, losing ground on safety faster than many had expected. Fear is once again shaping how people use the city.

    The big question now is, does urban safety always have to be a balance between human protection and public order? In the last few years, Nairobi’s streets have been overflowing with hawkers and their merchandise, leaving pedestrians with little space to navigate their activities including walking. The streets were markets for fruits and vegetables, cloths and even electronics, that often blocked entrances to city building or made their access quite troublesome.

    These street markets made movement difficult and inconvenienced motorists as pedestrians traffic spill into city roads as shoppers tried to negotiate their way on the busy pavements. Thought the subtle danger of pickpockets lingered, the human population formed a protective shield against any real danger.

    City authorities have eventually pushed the hawkers back into designated city back streets, restoring order and flow of human traffic and motorists in the central business district. But now, in the absence of hawkers, criminal gangs are moving in to fill the vacuum. The question is stark: must Nairobi choose between disorderly but relatively harmless hawkers or gangs that openly threaten the safety of everyone who passes through the city center?

    Nairobi cannot afford to gamble with the safety of its people. A city that fails to protect its residents and visitors loses more than its reputation; it risks losing the very things that make it a living, functioning city: its people, its businesses, its culture, and its energy.

    The warning signs are already clear on our streets. Unless decisive action is taken to reclaim the city centre, insecurity will continue to spread, eroding public trust and driving both business and visitors away. The choice is simple: restore security now, or watch Nairobi’s heart collapse under the weight of fear.

    Reclaiming Nairobi’s security will require more than public outcry, it demands action. The city must increase visible policing, dismantle criminal gangs, and invest in better lighting and surveillance. At the same time, authorities need to work with each other, the policy and the county government, businesses and even hawkers to restore order while pushing the criminals into the shadows where crime thrives. Unless Nairobi confronts both the criminals on its streets and the weaknesses within its policing, the city centre will remain a place of fear rather than a hub of commerce and community.