Truth-telling as a form of decolonial care: stories from a collaborative object biography research with the Ndau community of Eastern Zimbabwe

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the implications of having a museum practice in Africa that is underwritten by accountability, truth-telling and meaningful care for objects/living cultures that were appropriated from indigenous communities during colonization and extended periods of colonial domination. We argue that care is not just a function of conserving “objects” in a museum for presumed posterity but rather should be redefined and extended to address what it means to care for communities whose living cultures are still pretty much frozen in exhibitions or locked up in storage areas. We critique the whole anthropological or ethnographic categorization of objects, encapsulated in museological disciplines Museums Objects, Relics and Counter- Heritage has bent on “disciplining” the colony by alternatively posing that African museums must rehumanize living cultures and ancestors that they care for through proactive collaborations with communities at their doorsteps.