In his acceptance speech Achille Mbembe, a native of Cameroon, spoke about the restitution of African artefacts and emphasised the magnitude of their loss. He pointed out that every authentic politics of restitution was inseperable from a capacity for truth, such that honouring truth and acts of repairing the world became, by this very fact, the essential foundation of a new relation.
Panel Discussion Achille Mbembe and Andreas Eckert
In the subsequent discussion with Africa historian Prof. Andreas Eckert (Humboldt University Berlin), Achille Mbembe spoke about the current situation in South Africa. Further topics the two men touched on included the actual magnitude of migration from countries of the African continent to Europe and the question how far colonialism shapes Africa’s present to this day.